Aloha and welcome to apartment 206.
It has been many days; the depression that controls fights any and all productivity. Instead of living each day striving to catch those golden stars of progress, I spend my days full of anxiety, sadness, and death as a whole. This depression began following a discussion I had with my mother a couple of months ago in Seattle.
I have spent many years of my life dealing specifically with the sexual abuse I endured as a young child. I battled post traumatic stress disorder and the reoccurring flashbacks that haunted me for years. Following two years of intensive inpatient therapy I dealt with the abuse and by the time I left Island View Treatment center I felt relieved that I had finally put the past behind me – most specifically, the childhood trauma.
Following years of ECT treatment, not only had I put the past behind me, but the memory loss I suffered erased many memories of my past, both good and bad. It is hard to explain, but it feels like Michelle of the present is a different person than the Michelle of my past. Up until a couple of months ago I rarely thought about the events of my childhood and hardly felt a pang of emotion. Living a life split between the present Michelle and the previous Michelle, I drifted and further and further from any type of union the two parts might make. The feelings I had toward my past were unemotional and disconnected; so detached I started to wonder if anything ever really happened in the first place.
A couple months ago I went on a trip with my mother to Seattle. We visited my grandmother, uncle, and aunt. It was a lovely visit that commenced with a discussion that has since kept me hostage. I really don’t remember how the topic came about, but eventually my mother upon the history of a letter she received when I was away at high school in Connecticut. It was a letter written by our former live-in babysitter Carol – a woman I despised as a child. I remembered most how she would threaten to tell my dad lies in the intention that I would receive a spanking. I never liked her, but I never knew how much I really should have hated her.
Carol wrote a letter to my mom that would later shake the foundation on which I stood erect. As a recovering alcoholic, part of the twelve steps is atoning for behaviors that drinking and drugging often led to. So in Seattle I was told of this letter. She wanted to apologize for the incidents that occurred when her boyfriend at the time was around. While I am unclear whether it was soles the boyfriend, or if Carol was involved, she admitted to physically and sexually abusing me. I was shocked when I heard this news. For years I had dealt with this unknown abuse. I dealt with the flashbacks and the shame of sexual abuse that sucks the life out of your soul. But I felt I had finally won – regardless of knowing the people involved or the exact circumstances – I had put it in the past, and in the past is where I expected it to remain.
When I first heard about this letter I thought it would be the last leg and completion of a very long race. I thought the news would finally let my abused past disappear behind the new Michelle who focused on the future and how I would get there safely. However, not too long after I noticed that a dark cloud was hovering just west my apartment and I knew it was headed for me. As depression slowly seeped back into my life, I also experienced extreme self-hate and a specific shame that made my skin crawl. Fully embraced by this new depression I write to free myself. Only by facing my present depression will I ever fully get through it and grow strength that will crush any daring depression in the future. This depression is more focused on death than any before it and is strongly considering a return to the ECT that robs my memory blind. I have fought too long and too hard to just let this depression take me away forever. While my past will always be fuzzy, one thing I will always remember is fighter I am.
I want to get better so I can love the people who stand behind me and chase the dreams that were once thought impossible. And this I'll do.
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