Life With Depression

         I am by no means famous or important but like everyone else I am only human and deal with all human issues like death and sorrow. My life has not been an easy one and I have had to deal with a lot in my short 33 years of life, from losing half my family to relationship issues to being estranged from the family that I have left.

I have always been interested in the unknown and honestly believe that there is live after death. I also believe that sometimes when people pass on that their spirit stays around because they have unfinished business. The unfinished business could be anything from not being able to say goodbye to their families to helping someone find their killer. I do not know why I have these beliefs but I have always felt this way, ever since my father died when I was 10 yrs old. That is where my story really begins when I was ten years old and my father died, now I don't really remember all that much about that time but the things I do remember are disturbing. I remember waking up on that chilly October 17th morning of 1989 to seeing my dad being taken out of the house on a stretcher with a sheet over his head. I really didn't understand what was going on but I was frantically trying to get out of my bedroom to find out what was going on but my older and sister had blocked the door so I couldn't. The next thing I remember is my mom coming home from the hospital and taking me into the bathroom and telling me that my father had passed away and that he was never coming home again. I really didn't understand what my mom was telling me but it became more and more apparent as relatives started to show up, then there was the funeral. I was so upset and angry at my dad leaving me and it didn't make things any better when the priest of the church invited my class and my brother and sisters class to the funeral. I mean how could he put us through that torment of crying in front of our friends, but I guess that's the way they do things at little country schools like Marysville public school. I was so humiliated but my friends never mentioned anything about what happened at the funeral, they just instead planned my goodbye party as we were moving back to my hometown. I'll never forget that day for as long as I live and I truly believe that is when my bout with depression started. After my father's death I always wished he would come back to see me and watch over me but if he did I never saw him. I wish I had of because even though I was only 10 I had a lot I wanted to tell him like how angry I was with him for leaving me. Like most daughters I too was a daddy's girl and was very close to him, we had a very special relationship.

After my fathers death and the move back to my home town of Belleville Ontario, my aunt moved in with us with her daughter whom I had to share a room with. Me and my cousin did not always get along, in fact as kids we hardly ever got along at all. It always seemed to me that she was getting everything she wanted, she never got in trouble it was always me she blamed and I think for years I had a resentment towards her because of that. My mom started dating and not all of them men were losers, there were a few that I built a bond with and the one that comes to my mind first is Richard. Richard (who's last name has been lost to me for some time) was a very kind and gentle man and we got a long great. When Richard and my mom broke up he came up to my room to talk to me as I was in bed, he told me that he had to go away and that he wasn't coming around anymore. We both cried and then he gave me a hug and left. My mom dated some real losers too and I'd rather not remember any of them. There was this one guy my mom dated who used to physically abuse her, there's nothing in the world that can scare a child more than seeing a man sit on their mom with handfuls of hair bashing her head off the floor. It's truly terrifying, my sister tried to pull him off her once but ended up getting hit by him, then my mom went nuts and lost it.

In my 33yrs of life I unfortunately have had to deal with more than my share of loss. I was like I said 10yrs old when my father died at the age of 39 from a heart attack. When you are that age and you lose a parent you don't really understand what is happening around you. When my mom told me that he had died and wasn't coming home again I remember feeling so angry at him, at my mom at everyone especially god. Being the age of 10 I always wished that he would come home. To my knowledge he hasn't because I have not seen him, I have however felt like someone was watching me and as everyone knows that's a little creepy. When I was an adult my sister informed me that there had been nights when my dad had visited her while everyone was asleep. I never told my sister this but I was always jealous of this and angry that he had come to see her and not me, I mean how could he not have come to see his little pumpkin. I was young and needed to know and feel that he was with me, I missed him very much. I would have given anything to be able to see and talk to him again and I still feel that way especially now that I feel like I don't have any family. Eventually I realized that he was never coming home again and to this day I pray, wish and dream that I could see him again.

Looking back I now realize that my dad's death was the start of my depression, and learned at a very young age that life was never going to be the same and that I was never going to be the same. My father's death was very hard on me especially since I was at a very impressionable age. It wasn't until I was older that I found out that my father had died in bed next to my mom and that she too had been depressed when he passed away. She still had her anti-depressants when she passed away. I wonder why my mother never told us how she was feeling I know it must have been hard knowing that your husband is gone and that you are left to raise 3 kids on your own through their teenage years. And considering I have to say that my mother did a wonderful job with it, even though she and my brother and sister never really saw eye to eye. She used to always say that I was "the good child" and I was proud that she had not found out all the stuff that I did when I was a teenager in high school. I only remember her telling me that she was disappointed in me once and that was when I had an issue with a teacher at school and she had to go meet with the principle, although I never did get suspended or anything.

I have always felt like I needed to be strong and that I can't let people see how fragile I really was. This worked for quite some time but not long enough. I have never been good at talking about my feelings and letting people see how hurt I was, I always felt it was better that I kept things inside and didn't bother anyone else with my feelings, I have become quite good at putting on a show and acting happy when I'm not. The only person to ever call me on this was my brother and now that he lives in a different city he can no longer tell people this. Yet I'm only human so my feelings did poke through every now and then. However I kept smiling and pretending and putting on a show for everyone to make them believe I was happy and I got very good at it as I said but the difference was that I got so good I started to actually believe it myself. Me believing that I was happy was not really a good thing because I was denying that I was depressed and in the long run it hurt me more and more.

When I turned 12 my mom had met a man who she ended up marrying when I was 16, we had a rather unique relationship. And by unique I mean we could sit and call each other every name in the book just for the sake of it. My mom used to get so mad when we did that, so eventually we gave that up. Things were good for awhile, I got along with my stepfather and me and my mom got along great. Looking back I still realize that I was depressed just no one ever noticed I guess. My mom and stepfather were pretty cool though, I remember when I was 16 I went to my friend Marylou's house and we ended up having an impromptu party, we invited some friends and things kind of got a little out of hand and my cousin dared me to chug a huge cup of all kinds of alcohol that was there. I was really drunk as was everyone else that was there, then the worst thing that could happen to a drunk teenager happened. My mom and stepfather called and said they were on their way to pick me up. I got in the car and they asked me if I had been drinking and of course being 16 and afraid of getting into trouble I lied. Remarkably I didn't end up getting into trouble but boy did i greet the porcelain god that night. I did not however wake up with a hangover like my cousin did. Then there was the time when I was in grade 10 and my art teacher was picking on me the whole year and finally on the day of the final exam I had enough and told her off, I was very lucky that I didn't get suspended or grounded. My first love was when I was 19 we had a pretty good relationship until he told me that I was a lying to him about something that he knew nothing about. I was very upset when he looked me in the eye and told me that his friend did not beat the crap out of my mom. and that's where that relationship ended. I'm now friends with him and he is married with kids and he did find out the truth about his friend. I'm happy for him and hope to someday have what he has.

The next guy I dated I'm not sure exactly what I was thinking, now I'm not saying that because he was a bad guy. I'm saying that because he had 3 kids and what young adult who has not gotten all the partying out of their system is ready to put themselves into an instant family. I really liked him and his kids were great, it used to melt my heart when the boyfriend and his 2yr old son used to fight over me when we talked on the phone. I don't know why that relationship ended but it's probably best that it did, I was no where near ready to be a mom. I'm now friends with this ex as well, his kids are not so little anymore but they do have a great dad. My next relationship lasted quite a long time considering the mental abuse. He was an alcoholic and could get very mean but I loved him a lot so I tried to make it work. I can now say that a woman should NEVER pick a man up at the bar. When he wasn't drinking we got a long great. The relationship only lasted a year and I ended up throwing him out of the apartment we lived in with my parents before we moved to Kingston. Again I'm now friends with this ex as well, the last time we talked he told me that he no longer drinks and is doing very well in his relationship. I'm happy for him as well he deserves to be happy.

When I was 21 I ended up getting very sick for a year and they could not figure out what was wrong with me. I saw many doctors and had many tests done but still the best the doctor could come up with is and this is a direct quote "I think you have a nervous stomach". When I heard this I was very upset and all I could think about was what do you mean you "Think" i have a nervous stomach, you did all these tests and you don't know what is wrong. The only test the doctor didn't do was an ultrasound and at that point the ultra sound was never done. I was so sick that the only food I could keep in my stomach was chips and crackers, I lived off crackers for for months and Christmas dinner sucked that year as 20 minutes after I ate I was in the bathroom throwing up.

The move to Kingston... when I first moved to Kingston it was very overwhelming because it is a fairly big city and none of the buses meet at all. I did some volunteer work for awhile which I was very proud of. Then I started working for a call center where I did very well. I was very good at my job and by the time I left there I was able to activate a cell phone account in under 2 minutes. Things were going pretty good until I got sick again, this time however they were able to figure out what was wrong. It turns out I had gallstones and had to have my gallbladder removed. So my doctor sent me to a surgeon and the surgery was set for September 27, 2004. this is where the story takes another turn for the worse.

So the morning of my surgery I get up and head to the hospital, they prep me for the surgery and wheel me into the OR, they inject my IV with the sedative to knock me out, then the next thing I remember is waking up in the recovery room with the doctor standing at the end of the bed telling me that I didn't have the surgery. I was so disoriented and trying to figure out what was going on I did notice that there was an IV in my other hand, then I threw up on the nurse. When I was finally coherent I found out that when they went to put the tube down my throat my airway closed and I quit breathing and almost died. Needless to say my mom was freaking out because they were sending me up to the ICU unit so they can keep an eye on me for the night. That was the longest night ever, I was so bored and had trouble sleeping because every time I got to sleep the nurse would wake me up to check my vitals, and the gentleman in the next bed coughed all night so that was distracting. I did however make it through the night and was released to go home. When I left the hospital I thought it would be best for me to go to work to drop off my note saying that I could go back to work. When I got there my supervisor gave me trouble and said that I was taking the rest of the week off because I needed to do some relaxing after what I had been through.

After the whole almost dying thing the surgeon that was supposed to do the surgery was so freaked out that he refused to attempt to do the surgery again so I had to wait for the doctor to refer me to a new surgeon. I was put on Demerol for the pain and had to wait for almost a year before I was able to have my much needed surgery. While waiting for surgery on the first of June 2005 we found out that my mom was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer. I had my surgery on June 10th 2005. I really wasn't able to get a lot of rest after my surgery because it was up to me to take care of my mom and make sure she took her medicine. Things were tough but when I went back to work I managed to work full time and take care of my mom while my stepfather worked. It unfortunately wasn't long before my mom passed away from the cancer, her date of death was July 14th 2005 at 7:15 pm. Now the day my mom died was an off day there was a thunderstorm that day and it freaked me out where normally i would have loved it. Then at 7:15 that night the hospital called and asked for my stepfather, I advised them that he wasn't there and asked what was wrong, they told me that they could not tell me because my stepfather was the next of kin. I yelled at the doctor and stated that "I wouldn't be answering the phone if I wasn't family and demanded that he tell me what was going on." the doctor advised me then that my mom had passed away at 7:15.