My name is Kara; I’m a 48-year-old wife, mother, and writer from Indiana, USA.
I have a good life. I have a wonderful husband, two fantastic adult kids, a good day job, and access to things I need. I also have a long lineage of depression. I remember my grandmother staring out the window for long stretches of time, bereft. I remember my mother talking about her tears falling as steadily and reliably as rain.
I’ve struggled with depression all of my adult life, and before that, everybody just called me “sensitive” because I cried a lot. I’ve tried antidepressants, I’ve tried therapy, I’ve tried prayer, meditation, exercise, gratitude, deep breathing and primal screaming. Okay, the screaming was at someone in a grocery store who wouldn’t get out of the middle of the aisle. At any rate, it didn’t help.
As I get older, the depression is getting worse. It’s a dedicated little worker, digging holes ever deeper for me to fall in. It’s dragged me down, in these new, most severe stages, to catatonia and dissociation. Now anxiety has arrived as well, dressed in panic, paranoia and agoraphobia. In July 2020 I became, for the first time, actively suicidal.
I have a happy life. I really don’t have anything to be depressed about. But my brain is very sick. Now I’m going to try to heal.