I have almost no recollection of that day.
There were no feelings to remember....I was entirely past feeling.
What blips of memory that exist for me are in third person. I am watching myself but I am totally disconnected from myself.
My soon-to-be sister-in-law is in the house with my two children. They don't need me. I can't make myself think of them. They don't need me. Why can't I make myself think about them?
I am so numb.
Why don't I feel anything?
I am walking to my car that is parked in the driveway. I can see the highway. There are semi trucks coming down the highway.
Get in the car.
Drive to the highway.
No more me....
Why are you pulling me out of the car?
Why aren't you at work?
You are always at work this time of day.
What are you saying to me?
I can't hear you.
Why are you holding me?
I am invisible.
How can you see me?
Let go of me.
I need to find a big truck to run into......
I will never know what prompted my sweetheart to come home in the middle of the morning that day. I know for a fact that had he been even seconds slower in getting there I would have already destroyed my life without even knowing why.
The rest of that day was spent with my husband's arms around me. He drove me to a lake of some kind. We walked around, I think. I'm sure he really didn't know what to do so he just kept hugging me. I wish I could tell you that I felt something, but I didn't.
I'm pretty sure that day was a scraping bottom day. I've heard that when you hit rock bottom you should see it as a blessing because you have firm ground to shove off from while you climb back up the rope.
The problem with that moment of my life was that I wasn't even holding on to the rope, let alone having rational thoughts of climbing it.
In hindsight it is obvious that I needed medication. My body had never recovered from the postpartum depression and our baby was already several months old. My choices magnified the problem.
I owned my business. I was designing and installing window treatments all day and sewing them all night. Our babies were with me on the road and next to me while I sewed. My Sweetheart was working two jobs as well. We were forever pushing toward the summit.....but never seemed to get any traction.
I wasn't eating.
I wasn't sleeping.
I was barely thinking.
I was existing, a sort of animal instinct type of survival.
That was 20 years ago.
We've muddled through a bit since then, Mr. Steve and I. We've discovered and learned more than we care to know about depression. Trust me, it's a WE thing.
While it is clear now that I needed medication then, I chose a different path. In retrospect I have mixed emotions about that decision.
I recognize now how fragile life is. I recognize now how much work my Father in Heaven had planned for me to do and how paper-thin close I came to missing out on the privileges of living my life. So, if given a re-do, I would have asked for medication.
But I would also say, with gratitude in my heart that I'm still here and capable of looking back, that my struggle with depression has been a blessing.
Before you write me hate mail (and assume I'm judging everyone on Prozac) let me explain.
For the three years following that ground splatting day, I remained unable to feel. While I never went 'out of my mind' again, I still remained numb to most emotions. I don't have words to describe what this did to my marriage. This experience should have been the end of us, and almost was. But miraculously (and mostly because of Steve) we worked through it. Talk about tempered steel. If you ever feel to question the utter devotion I have for My Man, I'll have to point you to this time in our marriage. I would never wish the trials we went through upon anyone else nor would I ever want to go back to that mark in history, but.......
.... I would never want to tamper with the results of those hard times. In my personal situation, I'm not convinced that we would have learned the same lessons or gained the same strengths had I been medicated. (Now you can judge me.)
While the hormonal issues in my depression equation continued to fluctuate and at times improve, my decision making abilities did not.
We followed new employment to a distant state and found ourselves in a better situation but still struggling financially. It was so easy for me to pick up business to help out and off we went down the same path again.
And then it ended.
It was May. I had a deadline for an entire house to install and a three year old with an abscessed tooth....what I didn't have was a dentist. I packed the babies into the car (there were three of them now) and worked as quickly as I could, hoping I'd have a minute to find medical attention before closing time. After a long, miserable day, I put the Little People back into the car and wondered where to turn for help.
Then a dreadful thought hit my brain. It was the last day of the month. We mowed the several acres of lawn at our apartment complex and if I didn't get it finished before dark our rent would be due in full the next day. I stepped on the gas pedal.
A few minutes later a dog ran in front of me. I swerved but it changed direction and hit my tire. Now all three of the babies are crying because Mommy had killed a doggy.
After much drama and sadness, and a heaping dose of Worthless Mama thoughts, a kind neighbor carried the dead puppy to it's home and laid it on the porch...... where it miraculously jumped up and started barking at me.
Too late for a dentist, I put the babies in front of a movie with Popsicles and canned soup. Then I started the push mower. I would run a lap around the complex, check on the babies, and then run back to start the mower again and repeat.
It started to rain.
Dripping with sweat and rain, I forced myself to stop and check on the children. They were great. My carpet was not. Visualize soup sand castles on berber. I wondered if it was possible for anything else to go wrong.
There was a knock at the door.
"Sister Crosgrove! We were driving by and had a distinct impression that we should stop and talk to you about your missionary experiences!"
The sweet couple standing in front of me stopped smiling. It didn't register to my brain as to why they were staring at me. I didn't care. I did not have time for this.
"That isn't why we were supposed to stop, is it?" Their voices were solemn now.
They proceed to walk in without invitation. The older gentleman assesses the situation and starts washing my dishes without a word. His angel wife cleans up the soup castle and gets the babies excited for bath time. I'm still holding the front door open, completely frozen.
That's about the time my sweetheart gets home from work.
He looks around confused. The lawn mower is out in the rain, a strange woman is bathing the babies, and her husband is doing the dishes.
"Your wife needs you. She needs a blessing."
The next thing I know, I am sitting in a chair. The sweet woman is holding my hand. Our husband's are praying over me.
The peaceful moment is interrupted.
"Hellooooooo, is anybody out there? You left us in the bathtub!"
It struck me funny. I started laughing. Then I envisioned that stupid dog faking dead to get me in trouble and I laughed some more.
I hadn't laughed in three years.
I couldn't stop laughing for three days. The heavy oppression was lifted. The sun came out. I was me again.
Being me means I cry a lot. Some people think I cry because I'm depressed. This is not so. I cry because I can and I refuse to suppress such precious emotions. I cry when I feel impressions. I cry when I feel gratitude. I even cry when I'm downright happy sometimes!
I still battle this depression beast, but I learn something valuable about myself whenever I work through an episode. When I wrote Attitude Adjustment I was reflecting on some of those lessons learned.
I also mentioned in that post that Miss B played in a concert. She was opening for Wood Live Music and a good friend of ours, Bryce Wood. Bryce had just written a song about the perspective changes a person goes through when they deal with a terminal illness. He ended the concert with this beautiful song titled I Am Here. The powerful music moved me. It went straight to my soul. I felt like I was communicating my emotions through his music. I could feel myself standing in the middle of a huge grassy field, arms spread wide, face up to the sun, smiling big as life and yelling, "I AM ALIVE! I AM FEELING! I AM HERE!!!"
I don't mean to take anything away from those who face terminal illness and have to embrace the reality and shock that days are numbered. But I love the way my friend Jeanne put it at a funeral the other day. "We all came into this world with a round trip ticket."
Having looked death in the eyeballs I can tell you that I have learned to live in the moment. I don't take for granted the digits that were added to my own countdown. I will notice the blue birds and the yellow flowers. I will breathe each day like I won't get the chance to do so tomorrow.
I am here.
I am now.
"I will live this day as if it is my last. This day is all I have and these hours are now my eternity. I greet this sunrise with cries of joy as a prisoner who is reprieved from death. I lift mine arms with thanks for this priceless gift of a new day."
- Og Mandino
Listen to Wood Live Music here. Make sure you crank the volume. You might also want to keep a grassy field or a Kleenex in sight...just in case.
