learning to love

Wow, thank you first for sharing.
I'm sorry it's gotten that bad, and believe me I can relate with all my heart to what you are going through/have gone through with depression. I am proud of you for being so courageous to try to get help where it seemed impossible to go there before. I know it is scary, i have myself avoided meds at all costs, but I also told myself, next time, if it gets that bad . . . the exact same ultimatum you gave yourself. Are you seeing someone out there? To talk to that is?
Funny, when we moved from Ohio to Wisconsin in May I thought it was going to be the answer to our problems. Central Ohio, where I was born and raised, has turned from a rural farming community and small towns with universities to strip mall after strip mall dotted with larger fancier malls. To an artist (myself) and a hermit (andy) it was a constant drain and strain on pur pysches to live in this place of business without depth. There were of course things i still loved about it, like my family, and my old friends, and my childhood memories, and the smells of the river when you could still sense them through the traffic -- but otherwise I realized after 1 1/2 years of trying to live here again that I had grown too far from this lifestyle of work more buy more throw away more. Which is not to say that all people who live here are not living with similar values to us, but they were certainly impossible to find. Anyway, we are all part of this machine no matter how far we try to step out of it (and I have run far as possible it seems sometimes), but at least there are some things we can do to ease our conscience, right?
Anyway, so i had a big turning point in realizing finally at age 28 that I had gone too far to come back to the way that was okay for everyone else in my family to live and I had to make that distinct break with my own little posse and find our little piece of paradise.
We moved in May, and in June I was desperately depressed. Worse than ever, but I hadn't realized it until it was already so far gone and it seemed that in Ohio I was in a very manageable state, if not pleasant, at least manageable. I couldn't get out of bed, was terribly angry all the time, etc.
Imagine my confusion as I thought I was happy moving back to Wisconsin and I really wanted to be there. But you know they say that moving is the number 1 or 2 most stressfull things a person can do in their life. I guess I reached my threshold.
I tell you this story because I wonder if your recent move put you over the edge, so to speak, as did mine in the summer time. Have you thought of that, my dear?
Now I am in Ohio for one more day, and I have had the luxury of coming all alone, no child, no husband, to see my father and simply be with him in whatever capacity we can be for a week. I dreaded the trip and in the last couple of days before coming I couldn't sleep and had horrible anxiety, and i though of cancelling the trip. I had heard horror stories from my siblings about the states of things and was petrified.
What I have found here in Ohio, in my father, is a true second chance. A true miracle and inspiration. My father isn't horrifying at all but hilarious, inspiring, and a joy to be around. I am in fact more comfortable with him than ever in my life, and it is a great relief to be released from the anger I carried towards him in my younger days, and to be able to relax and wonder at the transformations he is making.
A traumatic brain Injury is one of the most horrible injuries that can ever happen to a person, because their entire life and accomplishments and everything they have learned is literally wiped out in a matter of seconds. Physical wounds can be healed or adapted to, even paralysis can be overcome with adaptation, but tbi can be a dark tunnel of neverending mysteries. Before his accident my father was a very ambitious and driven man, high powered you could say. He never stopped. It was these qualities of his personality which angered me and drove me from him.
But underneath that was a yearning for more, a deep religious conviction and spiritual longing for God. This caused my father to be a walking contradiction, for his anger and drive would rule him one day, and his assured peace and calm from church or study would rule him the next. As a child I feared and mistrusted the anger and on the other side longed to please him with piety.
Now Dad is amazed by everything and everyone, and never hesitates to tell even strangers that he loves them. the smallest things make him grateful and teary eyed with joy. He is a gushing spring of adoration for his wife and children and grandchildren. he suffers great physical pain, incontinence, short and long term memory loss, and uncontrollable fits of laughter as well as sobbing. he also doesn't always call me by my name or anyone or anything by its proper name, but he knows what he is talking about and eventually we get it too.
I never realized that after the shock of almost losing him, which was also the shock of realizing how deeply and inexplicably I truly loved my father and how that had been locked within me, that I could actually begin, after all of this change, to love him more. My father was an enigma to me before. Now he is my hero, having restored my faith in the power of love to overcome all obstacles, having restored my faith in miracles.
So this week has not been depressing or tragic or confusing. I have found a state of grace and ease within myself, and even feel a bit guilty that for the first time in a long time in my life, something isn't hard as fuck. Something has lifted. Perhaps all that I have been through in the past years was just to prepare me for this moment, so that I could stand tall and say nothing, absolutely nothing, can bring me down now. And as my father has taught me so quietly and beautifully this week -- all that matters is that we are here and we can love each other, no matter how backwards or sideways it comes out, our only most vital and important and pertinent task is to Love. Now that everything else has fallen away for my father, he can do just that, and I am forever grateful and changed by his teachings. What a sacrifice he has made to give me this gift!
I am sad to leave him and wish that I could be here with him each day, but I know when i call him on the phone he will say "Hi baby, I love you so much I can hardly stand myself, you are the best daughter in the whole world" and I will know with my whole heart that he really means it, and I will have heard the thing I was always waiting for him to say.
i hope this lifts your heart and reminds you of what you already know. this too shall pass. all rivers lead to the ocean of love.
heidi