I've wanted to keep a blog about all the fun (wink,wink) of depression for a long time, thinking that it might be therapeutic, and maybe even helpful for someone? So here's hoping.
Why the title 'Playing with Depresion'? Well, I suppose it has a double meaning. First, playing is what I do. For me and my boys, C and L, playing is our way of life. Ever since C was born, 9 years ago, we have spent an inordinate amount of time in world's such as The Island of Sodor, Radiator Springs, Neverland, and Toyland. And all the pretending and playing has only become more grandiose with time, thanks to their enthusiasm and my OCD. Indeed, OCD is another part of the puzzle...
My prayer is always that my boys will remember all the playing and imagining they did in their childhood, and not the cloud of depression that sometimes crept in and spoiled it all. It is the hardest thing I have to do each day...playing with depression; putting on a larger than life smile, speaking ever so animatedly in a British or New Jersey accent or whatever the flavor of the day is, and engaging with two beautiful boys in imaginative play that is fulfilling for both a 9 year old, and a 5 year old.
I actually started keeping a journal of our play stories, because the worst thing in the world for an OCD mom would be to forget them all, right? This is slightly embarrassing, maybe a lot embarrassing, but here's one of my 'toy story' journal entries and a good example of what kind of 'play' I'm talking about. (Here's OCD at its finest, folks):
"This morning, L brought out some props for all of us to use for a story. He had a giraffe to ride on, his skeleton hand pointer that glows in the dark (to light our way) and he brought me a compass/whistle, and he brought C a helmet and his Mielmack sword. Our quest was to find the crystal of life hanging from an evergreen tree and then bring it to the princess who had been captured, shrunken, and rendered unconscious. We first had to take the 'elevator' up a few floors. When we were about to get on the elevator, I noticed a green monster inside with 5 eyes. I told C as soon as we step in, he needs to stab it with his sword (which would turn it to steel). As soon as we stepped in, C instead, thought the monster was so cute and made friends with it and decided to keep it as his pet. When we got to the right floor, the monster's parents were there and we knew they would think that we had kidnapped their son. Luckily, C could speak in their tongue and explained to them that we were friendly. Then C translated for them as they explained that “we only ate those millions of people because we were mad since our son was late for school.” Then C told them what the mission was and they joined up. Next, we found the evergreen tree with the crystal. There was a knight guarding the tree, who was nice. C reached up to grab the crystal, but touching it directly caused him to freeze in a block of ice. Luckily, L has fire powers and he was able to unfreeze C by simply touching him. C then explained that the crystal froze any living thing that touched it. So L used his pointer to lift it off the tree and then to transport it around. Now we had to get to the princess. My compass led us to the kitchen, where there was a lap top. As soon as C saw it, he ran away screaming because it had a shampoo pop-up add that had popped up so suddenly. He ran away and wanted to give-up on the mission. He said he was going native and was going to marry an oppposum princess. L and I took over and froze the laptop as well as several other laptops that had appeared. C came back and L had died because he accidently touched his giraffe’s ears. Next, C froze because he touched the crystal in an effort to give it to L to bring him back to life. So I blew the whistle on my compass, the sound was so loud that it shattered the ice that C was frozen in. L came back to life, but actually had been a robot all along and had been switched to silly mode. Somehow, we all managed to get back on to the elevator, but while we were on, C felt something moving around on his back. It was a tiny robot spider. It bit him and took over his mind. He then pried open the elevator door when it was between two floors. He then accidently fell down the shaft all the way to the bottom. L and I climbed up to the next floor. On the way, C rejoined us. But in his effort to take back control of his body his brain went into the robot spider’s body and the robot spider’s brain went into C’s body. SO C was now a tiny robot spider, but at least he was back in his right mind. We found the princess in a small container, being guarded by the annoying orange. C stabbed him with his Mielmack sword and he turned into steel. Then, we found there was an even greater villain who was guarding the princess. Orange had just been his minion. The bad guy was the supreme lord of darkness. The Mielmack didn’t work on him. But, we realized we could use the crystal. It was his greatest weakness. As soon as it touched him, he froze and crumbled into nothing. Then we freed the princess, but she was still small and unconscious so we used the crystal of life to revive her. She then came back to life and ran away free. Our last job was to return the crystal to the evergreen tree. But we found that the tree was really the evil tree goblin and he was very angry and wanted his crystal back. We tried to stab the tree with the Mielmack, to no avail. Then the tree said that he promised there was a way to destroy him on the crystal. L and I thought it was a trick for the tree to get the crystal back. But then we realized it was the string—the string that the crystal was attached to could kill the tree. L touched the string to the tree and the tree goblin died. We needed to think of a new place to keep the crystal. L wanted to keep it on his giraffe’s ear, but the knight, who guarded the tree, explained that it cannot be kept with anything living. “Thousands of years ago, a person had hoarded the crystal. The crystal then took over his mind, and he killed nearly half of the population in the world. One person was able to get the crystal and put it on the tree before the maniac killed him and then killed himself.” We decided to keep the crystal hidden in the elevator shaft. So we climbed on top of the elevator, which was still stuck between two floors, and then we hung it on the top of one of the pulleys, where no one would ever find it.”
Mercy.
So, second meaning of the title 'playing with depression': depression is definitely not a game, but there is a certain amount of 'playing' or 'tweaking' involved in figuring out how the hell to live with it, and I mean 'live' in a very, very literal sense. I have been 'playing' at this for over 10 years, trying to find a medication that is helpful, going to therapy here and there (when in reality there's nothing and I mean nothing that anyone can say to lessen depression.) Certain SSRI's have helped at times, but I'm definitely still searching for something, anything, to give me some peace.
So there it is.
