Depressed

November 22, 2020

There’s something so comforting about camp.  

It’s early Saturday morning and the air is cool. I’m stepping out of my car, grabbing my backpack out of the passenger seat, donning my mask, and heading over to the cluster of moms and girls fifty feet away. The troop leader smiles and waves, greeting me as I join them. I see recognition light a couple of the girls’ eyes, curiosity shines through the others.

“Thanks for coming, Madison! Girls, some of you might remember-”

“Oreo!” a girl interrupts.

I can’t help but laugh at the camp name I haven’t been referred to in over six years. The troop leader continues introducing me and we wait for the other girls to arrive. It’s my first excursion with this troop and I’m immediately glad I came. I was a Girl Scout for twelve years, and then I was a camp counselor the summer before my brain surgery, and then I was on the Gold Award Committee for the council before I moved to DC. When I moved back this year, I was reconnected with the Council I grew up in and am back on the Gold Award Committee. Now I’m volunteering with this troop that has girls ranging from elementary school to high school. Today the Cadettes, middle school-aged girls, are at camp to work on their Silver Award and to earn their archery badge. Looking around at the camp that I’ve been coming to for twenty years, I can’t help but feel like I’m wrapped in a warm embrace.

And to think I’d almost canceled a dozen times this morning.

A few weeks ago my family expressed to me that they were concerned I was maybe depressed. They walked through all of the reasons why and I disagreed. Vehemently. As my parents asked if I’d consider talking with my doctor and counselor I shut down. I can be…kind of obstinate. Stubborn, is maybe a better word. I’m way better than I used to be, but I still have traces of it, and when it comes out, it’s strong. So as they’re discussing the avenues I need to pursue to acquire medication, I’m digging in my heels and effectively shutting down from the conversation. I get up, leave the room, and think to myself that they’re wrong and that I have a high-pressure job, in a global pandemic, and eighteen other things that make it even more difficult. And we’re in the highest fundraising time of the year and planning for the next year and I just have a lot going on. So I don’t. They’re wrong. They’re wrong.  

But the thought keeps niggling at me. A few days later I’m eating dinner while my dad is cracking pecans and I ask if he really thinks I’m depressed. He puts down the pecan he’s cracking, looks at me, and says, “your eyes are sad. They don’t have that…life they used to.” My knees buckle where my heels used to be digging in. Internally, I collapse.  

I finish dinner and then email my counselor to ask if she’ll move up our appointment and that my family is concerned about depression. She moves it up and performs a depression screening. I kind of feel like lying so I don’t get a confirmed diagnosis, but my dang integrity won’t allow me to - which is annoying.

“Well, Madison, I do think you have depression.” 

Not what I wanted to hear. I go on to say all of the reasons I really don’t think that I do, all of the other things going on that could be affecting me, the stress, the pressure, that it’s probably just a temporary thing, maybe social media too. I don’t need to consider medication or anything.

She just looks at me skeptically and says it sounds like the whole, “methinks the lady doth protest too much” kind-of-thing. Then she says something that once again buckles my knees and somehow fortifies me at the same time, “Madison, you’re looking at the future and are daunted. Madison Darling doesn’t look at the future and is daunted.”

It’s true.

The future is daunting, but with this diagnosis, in the present, I’m terrified.

I did have a history of depression, and it was a symptom of the Chiari Malformation. Surgery fixed it, and after surgery, I was a completely different person. People who knew me said it was like a cloud had lifted and you could see the sunshine once again.

The depression was really bad before the surgery. I remember at the time, my mom, for some strange reason, was really opposed to the idea of me going on medication. She couldn’t explain it, but for some reason, thought it was the wrong thing to do.  

She was right. It wouldn’t have been good for my brain then and wouldn’t have really fixed it. It would have masked the symptoms. I might not have gotten help in time.

So I’m terrified for a couple of reasons. One, I had a debilitating episode of vertigo around the same exact time my parents started noticing the depression symptoms, and lately, the ringing in my ears has gotten worse, and I’ve had a few times where my hands have gone numb and cold.

These are the exact same symptoms I had before my brain surgery.

So I’m concerned.

I’ve finally grown my hair out to the length it was before my surgery. I’ve finally lost the weight I gained from my surgery. I’m finally feeling like I had grieved and settled in. Now I’m wondering if God brought me home to Montgomery to have surgery around my family and when I’m just now on my own insurance! I don’t want to pay for that!

The brain surgery was a treatment, not a cure. My skull didn’t grow enough for my brain, so they took parts of my skull out to make room, but they can’t shove my brain back up into my head in the correct place. The full resolution of my Chiari just isn’t possible and I’ll have symptoms for the rest of my life.

So I’m guessing I shouldn’t be surprised the depression came back. I am surprised my family is advocating for medication. When I’m discussing it with them, my mom brings up a good point, that my brain literally doesn’t have enough room for everything to fire properly, so it needs the medication. I might not have to be on medication forever, just for a little bit to give it a boost. I just keep protesting and logically countering every argument. Then, my dad asks me a pointed question, slicing through what I’m saying and what I’m not saying.

“What is it that you’re afraid of?”

At the time, I answered honestly, that I was afraid medication would mask symptoms to something I needed to get checked out. That I’d miss the underlying cause and something life-threatening would go undiscovered and I’d lose my life as a result. That’s understandable and valid, but not complete.  

Still, I called my doctor and discussed everything with her, asking for a prescription for anti-depressants and a referral to a neurologist. I’ll live for a both/and moment, not an either/or. I’ll treat the symptom while checking for an underlying cause. I’ll make sure my Chiari Malformation and the Arachnoid Cyst in my brain stem are both where they’re supposed to be. Not that either of them is supposed to be there, but still.

She meets both requests and I’m filling the prescription before I can back out. 

It’s rocky, at first. I’m nauseous and exhausted and yawning excessively, but it’s been two weeks and I’m starting to feel a little less daunted.

Still, it’s why I almost canceled on the Girl Scout troop this morning. I almost canceled because doing stuff just seems exhausting and like entirely too much.

But now, as we’re hiking to the start of the Hickory Trail and I’m surrounded by the excited chatter of eager Girl Scouts, I realize that my initial fear, while real and valid, was not complete.

I know now that I was afraid the medication would make me different.  

Synthetic.  

I was worried that as the medication artificially enhanced my neurons’ firing, it would also artificially enhance my personality, and I wouldn’t be me. That maybe I wouldn’t authentically feel anymore. Wouldn’t write. The writing has been painful over the years, the processing difficult, the feeling excruciating, but so, so worth it.

Now, as I’m hiking through these woods that I’ve hiked countless times before, I realize the medication doesn’t make me synthetic.

With the depression, it’s like I was hiking through the woods and fell into an old well, uncharted on the map and unknown to me. In this well, all I can see is the narrow walls around me. All I can feel is the rough stone cutting into my hands as I try to climb out. But I can’t. My shoes can give me a little bit of traction, my arms can maybe get me a little bit of leverage, but I can’t get very far before I slip or my muscles give out and I fall down once again. The longer I’m there, the higher the walls will seem. The colder the little remaining water at the bottom will get and the more I’ll want to sit down but won’t be able to. I can’t get myself out of that even though I was prepared for a hike, dressed appropriately, and have some snacks, and that preparation sustains me longer than I could go without it. But I also can’t see any way out of it.

That preparation, the discipline I’ve developed in eating well, exercising, getting sleep, it carries me long enough for someone to realize I’ve fallen into the well. The doctor, counselor, friends, and family are able to lower down a rope. The medication is able to bring me back on level ground. It allows me to explore the world around me once again. So while I thought it would make me synthetic, it doesn’t. It allows me to get out of that well and to walk through the landscape around me fully. No longer am I confined to that narrow, limited environment. Now I can climb mountains and walk through valleys and I can move. I can move through the emotions and feelings and experiences once again. I’m free to go not forced to remain.

Driving away, tired from the hike and sore from holding the bow and arrow with muscles I haven’t used like that in a while, I’m content. I’m glad I didn’t cancel, glad I got to be Oreo again, glad I’ll be back up for another hike after the holidays, glad I’ll be back involved with Girl Scouts, and feeling more like myself than I have in a long time. I’m content.

And I don’t think that’s a feeling any medication can make.

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