Autumn’s early leaves, in crisp dark reds, pale yellows and
cinnamon toast browns, began swirling around our driveway weeks ago. When they
began drifting into our dog’s fenced-in kennel, my German shepherd would often
carry them into the house between his teeth, one leaf at a time, until their
numbers increased and they became piles to be ignored, along with fuzzy
caterpillars and ladybugs crawling along the cement.
A few days ago, as I watched the sun set over my newly-bloomed
asters and pale pink zinnias, I realized I have now touched my first three
seasons in 30 years off anti-depressant drugs. And now as I get ready to set my
mind on a better winter than last year, I wonder how everything is going to be.
In April I determined, along with my doctor and
husband, that I would stop taking the anti-depressant that I thought had kept
me going for so long. Just in case, I pulled out an extra roll of bubble wrap and a few down quilts as
protective measures against life’s assaults. I don’t mean someone mugging me on
a Wausau side street, I mean an iPhone that suddenly goes dead, an Excel
spreadsheet that has left me flummoxed, or a dog that thinks “hello” is a paw
to my face. On a bad day, anyone of those things can throw me under the bed.
Instead I used the bubble wrap to cushion homemade cookies
that I sent to my son in Michigan and the extra quilts are packed in one of my
husband’s hand-built dressers in the basement. I have done so well off
anti-depressants that mostly I have wondered why I took them at all. When I
felt bad and very bad and worse, I was certain that some combination of drugs,
and there were many over 30 years, was off-kilter or not strong enough or too
strong or just flat-out wrong.
At one time, drugs provided relief for me and so every time
I felt depressed, even while on medications, I was sure that another medication
would fix it. This mindset allowed me to spend much of my time moving along
from the ages of 20-50 blaming a doctor or a counselor or another person who
did not understand my depression. Six months after stopping anti-depressant
drugs, I am wondering if they were just a convenient tool around which my whipping
post wound itself.
Me without this thing to blame, is something that I am
hoping is a little better. A little better because maybe I have found a better
way to deal with life’s uncertainties; better because maybe I have stopped blaming
things that have no blame; better because maybe I have learned to “just notice”
instead of attack; better because maybe I have learned that my chronic worry is
chronic lack of faith; and better because maybe I can do what my husband often
points out to me: “You can’t always change what happens to you, but you can
change how you interact with it.”
I don’t know if I will stay off anti-depressants. But I know
I won’t have depression in the same way ever again. I hope I have not dishonored
or disrespected those who do have depression in my journey of discovery because
I may be a person with depression yet again. But never again will I be a person
who blames depression. Instead I will be a person who has depression.
I am a very slow learner. Blessedly I am loved by a patient
God. Instead of pounding myself and hating myself, I would like to choose a different path. This morning it involved rolling out my yoga mat
and listening to my instructor calmly take me from downward facing dog to upward
facing dog to warrior one and deep breath in and deep breath out. Right now,
this is my passage of time. Next spring it may be different. In this peaceful
slow-down, bad things still happen and life is still hard, but mostly,
everything is going to be….