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Living Alone With Depression 

by Carolyn Stephenson
 
I have lived alone for almost 18 years.  Now this is not to say that no one resided in my home during all of those years.  I am discounting children and grandchildren, since they don't provide that avenue of communication that an attentive spouse/significant other would provide.  During all of those years, and most of my life, I have lived with depression.

I hear people say that their depression has worsened since the onset, or diagnosis, of PD.  I don't believe that to be true in my case.  I do see that my depression has worsened over the past two years, but I believe that it is because I have less distraction in my life.   Since I "retired" from the working world, and because I have no one in my home to chat with or discuss the day, etc., I have plenty of time to focus on how depressed I get at times.  When I worked I could bury myself in my job.  At my last job, I worked 50 to 60 hours a week, and then brought work home and continued the distraction at home.  Many of us with young onset PD leave the work-a-day world far too early.  And like many, I quickly discovered that for many years I had defined my self-worth by my job.  Other than church events and Sundays, I had no outside activities.

Depression is not a pretty part of my life - in fact it's not a pretty part of anybody's life.  Like so many, I work hard to hide the ugly face of depression from the outside world; to protect those around me, family, friends, etc., but I didn't always do so.  During my separation and divorce during 1985 and 1986, I poured myself upon my family and went beyond testing the limits of their ability to help.  So, for the many years sincethat time, I have hidden behind the confines of my home, suffering alone.  I know it is not healthy, mentally or physically, to suffer alone.  I see the choice as "put on a happy face", or lose friends and alienate family.

I believe that the hardest part of living alone with depression is getting out of bed in the morning, trying to find purpose in each new day.  I do what I need to do to live, but life feels so empty most of the time. With PD,  I have a schedule to maintain, and I also have a diabetic schedule.  I have online projects and commitments, which I struggle to maintain.  My self-worth is in question on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis these days. I have allowed PD to isolate me from the world to a degree that I don't like. "Alone in a crowd" is a phrase I understand all too well.

The ultimate response to depression is suicide.  The experts say that once you have attempted suicide, you are always at risk for the rest of your life, and I for one believe that is very true.  Once you have tried, as I did many years ago, you realize just how easy it is to commit such an act. In particular, over the past year or so, I have struggled with the question I constantly pose to myself, "Do it or don't do it?"  The list of methods I have formulated is very long.  The most recent additions were formulated when I discovered that I had diabetes.  Oh, how easy it would be to withhold my insulin, or stuff myself with forbidden foods, or just not eat food at all.any of these would do the job.

All of this having been said, and knowing that I am exposing myself by writing about my struggles with depression and living alone, I have to say that it is harder to survive depression that it is to survive a combination of PD and diabetes.  Sometimes it is a daily struggle.  Sometimes it is an hourly struggle.  My survival tactics are the questions that I ask myself when contemplating my "list".  I don't always appreciate the answers, but thankfully the answers are always the same:

How would my children feel?  I review this question child by child, not as a group.
How would my grandchildren feel?  What explanation would their mother's give to the little ones

who see the empty place in the family, but can't grasp why it is empty?
How would my mother and sisters feel?
How would my in-law family feel?

As I said, I don't always appreciate the answers, but those answers do help to bring sanity back into my mind.  There is only one answer, guilt, and that is not acceptable.  It is like a large stop sign.  As a whole, the people listed above would feel guilt for not realizing how depressed I had been.

As I write this, I know that tonight and tomorrow will be one of those days when I have to monitor my feelings and my sanity so that they don't get out of control.  Nothing comes easy to me in life, never has, never will.  Many have told me that this is a defeatist attitude.  Only those who know me well know that this is a true and accurate statement.  My car broke down twice tonight, for the third and fourth time in six weeks; a car that hadn't broken down in over a year while my daughter drove it.  Twice it was fixed the first time and then broke down again on the way home from being repaired.  When my daughter arrived at my spot on the side of the road to pick me up and take me home, I said, "Nothing comes easy for me in life.ever!"  Her response, "No it doesn't'.  I know that", as she patted my hand.  I can't afford to repair it again until September 1st when my disability check arrives again.

So, I can either see only four weeks of isolation looming ahead of me, or see the opportunity to go on walking tours of my new town up here in the hills of Upstate NY.   I know that latter will not be easy to do, and that is has to be a choice I make, not a necessity.  Before last Friday, I was isolated on top of a hill with nowhere to go unless my daughter was home to take me somewhere while waiting for the car to be repaired. So, the positive is that I am no longer isolated on top of the hill.

So, what message do I want you, the reader, to take from all that I have written?  Regardless of the degree of depression, there are reasons to move forward in life.  June 1st I began another moving odyssey, and it has been full of very nasty "baggage".  Because of this most recent odyssey, I have a new slogan to live by, "Live life in forward motion."  I don't have the time to idle along the path reviewing over and over again the pain of life, the mistakes of life.  I can only live today, keeping in mind the many lessons I have learned from days past.never repeat a mistake.  If I were to live otherwise, I would be found in my grave in a very short time.