I was charming, using all the tricks I had learned to mask my problem. I wonder how many people struggling with depression have played similar tricks on the people who care for them.
Eventually, though, that night on the porch, I understood I couldn’t continue this way if I wanted to live. I could hear that part of me that knew something was seriously wrong, like a small voice calling from the bottom of a deep hole. That moment of clarity gave me something to hold on to so I could find the strength to get better.
My parents convinced me to drop out of university for a year and enroll at a school closer to home. It took years to fully recover. I tried therapy and antidepressants, but they didn’t work very well. I needed time to heal.
Even when I started at my new school, there were days when I fantasized about running my car off the road. But I kept moving forward and I learned to ignore the disease whispering in my brain until it lost its voice.
I don’t know why I made it through and so many others haven’t. It’s not the enormous will I brought to getting better because sometimes, just as with people stricken with cancer, will is not enough.
I don’t talk about my illness. Not with my husband, my friends or my family. I certainly don’t share it with strangers. So I felt a weight when I heard about Rick Rypien’s and Wade Belak’s struggles. Because if people like me do not speak up, we squander the gift we’ve been given. I hesitated over writing this essay because I didn’t want people to know and judge me unkindly. But I realized I had a duty to others that trumps my own worries.
By keeping this disease a secret, we are giving it too much power over those who suffer. We should be rallying around people with depression just as we rally around those who suffer from other illnesses. One way to start is for those who are ill, or who have been, to begin telling their stories. Just as I’ve told mine to you.
Bess Hamilton lives in Winnipeg.
