The Catharsis

Tired

2009-02-16T22:35:00.002-05:00

Every day is truly a challenge. Getting up, going to sleep, eating, walking, attending the things I need to attend to. I have neither motivation nor any real desire to go about to do these things. I am tired of the constant feeling of exhaustion. My neither parents, nor do the majority of my friends know about my depression, and while I do not feel like I am ready to tell them, none the less, I am exhausted from keeping it a secret. My parents believe that the symptoms of this severe depression that I've had over the last ten years are just simple laziness, lack of motivation and a wanton excuse to comit nothing but to enjoyment. I loose myself in things, such as books, movies, sport jerseys, hats, gloves, shoes and even militaria. I collect, needlessly, gaining a little excitement and happiness upon purchase but not gaining enough of a joy out of it in the long run. Most of these things that I enjoy to collect, sit on shelves, or in the closet, collecting dust. Disintegrating into nothingness. I am tired of being stressed, of being anxious, of always looking at the worst case scenario for every possible, potential outcome. I am tired of worrying about everything. Of worrying about school, about getting things done, when I cannot seem to find the energy, or motivation to do them. I am tired of worrying about my health. I have gained some weight over the past few months, which my parents continue to berate me about. My mother, keeps posting pictures around the house from five years ago when I had been much slimmer (even though, than, they had been unhappy with my "healthy and weight"); I worry about my heart and my blood pressure, which I had to go to the Emergency Room for, because it had been so high, the headache so painful that I thought I was having a heart-attack. I anxiously think of the fact that my father had been nine years older than me at this moment when he died.

I'm tired of everyone and everything. Of things not going my way, of people consistently bickering about their boyfriends or girlfriends or their friends girlfriends and boyfriends. I am tired of my friends, but I feel worried and anxious about disappointing them and breaking off potential friendships due to this depression.

While I may be tired day to day, feel sick and worried with anxiousness of how much time I have yet to live, I see a light at the end of the tunnel. My feelings may not be perfect but I am alive.
I have come to adhere to the principle that while things may not be perfect, that while this depression has definitely been crippling, I have accomplished much in my short life. Even in the last few months, I have met a wonderful person who I have started dating, I have met and created a bond between the family of the significant other and friends. I have been able to land a job in a field that I have remote interest, no matter what the hours and pay have been and after a year off from school, I have been able to get back.

While my marks may be suffering from my inability to focus and motivate myself, I know that things will only get better as time goes on. This feeling of unease, of stress, of anxiousness and tiredness, this feeling of chest-pain and overall worry about health all stem from my depression.

Perhaps that while it may not seem logical, it gives me some peace and comfort. It gives me the acknowledgement that while I am a unique individual, with a unique set of circumstances I am not alone.

I guess the constant worry about health is a by-product of the worry that I am somehow doomed, that all these feeling stem from some problem with my vision, with my brain, with my heart, with my kidneys.

I am tired of being afraid. I worry that sometimes I will die in my sleep, I worry excessively when I have been cleaning something as simply as the bathroom and felt like I had smelt too much of the mist from the cleaning solution. That I would somehow be poisoned. I’m tired of worrying about what everyone around me thinks of me, of what I should say or do, that will make sure I never upset anyone, or say anything that might upset someone, especially those that I love dearly.

I would like to sleep, without worrying about my dreams, without wondering what they mean. Without a feeling of guilt, anxiousness or stress, I would like to sleep to stave off the feelings that I need to get things done, but I know that’s not a possibility. I need to face life as it comes at me, without undermining everything else that happens.

Light will be there at the end of the tunnel. No matter how dark the road may be.

Paternal Family

2009-02-15T22:35:00.003-05:00

Having written about my paternal grandfather, I think it must be understood that while I do not know every single individual within my father's side of the family, there are contrasts, wide, varying contrasts to my grandfathers greed, selfishness and faithlessness or lack thereof.

My father was a contrast to his siblings, his sister and his older brother are just as greedy, just as selfish, just as unwilling to lend compassion and care for those around them. While my aunt is a much better person, my uncle is cheap, he puts on a show that he cares, but after being told by my mother that he never did much to help her after her husbands, my fathers, his brothers death; I've noticed a pattern.

Much of his demeanour, is that of someone who attempts to fool the children into believing that he cares. Generally though, he did nothing to prove otherwise. Taking his niece and nephew out for a day when my mom had to do business was never his proposition, and when my mother begged him to come, he would generally show up late or do it with contempt.

From what I know of him, he had been cruel to his past pet and to his only son. Not in so, by beating him excessively, but by hoarding anything he could that his son could potentially desire. At a time when good chocolate was in demand and was hardly seen on the shelves in the government stores, my uncle instead of sharing it with his son, instead of sharing it with his family, would hoard it for himself whatever chocolate he could find. His mother, likewise a cruel woman, was unkind to my sister and myself. She would go out of her way to try to gather any type of rumour about my mother and our side of the family.

My cousin, the offspring of my uncle and my aunt had been raised in a toxic environment. He neither showed contempt nor much care or affection for his youngest cousins. He had been significantly older by the time I came around. Much like his father, he hoarded his own toys as per keeping them for his own future child. I remember that in 1989 he would not let us play with his lego, even though he had been over the age of majority and had been in his late twenties. He would not give it to us either, since he wanted to keep it for his own children. Ironic, considering that his first child was only born late in this decade. Nearly two decades later.

My aunt, although more compassionate, was similarly selfish, but I do not think, nor want anyone to think that I hated any of my family. None the less, her husband had left her after the collapse of communism and settled in a completely different country. His two children had been good to us as older cousins but still had lacked affection, or perhaps due to the age difference and the distance of two main towns, it was impossible to really spend enough time.

Unlike my grandfather's offspring, his brother, a pious and religious man who stayed behind and lived in the town that my grandfather had been born in, had three children. All similarly religious and pious. They had been musical, lived a few steps away from the town square and the main church. My uncle became a priest and his sisters had desired to follow him likewise into the covenant. Although, since, they have taken a different path and followed the teaching profession. My great uncle, my grandfather's brother is a kind man, who always showed us more compassion, more care, more understanding than my own grandfather.

My great aunt, had been a very pious woman who up until the birth of her daughters illegitimate child had denied the whole thing simply because she could not see that being a possibility. She died shortly after I was born.

As for my other great uncle, he lived in the South, and I don't remember seeing much of him. Other than the fact that he had been also a cruel, greedy, cheapskate, much like his brother.

My grandfather, eventually sold the store and one of the buildings that his father had owned, gave the other to his brother, half grudgingly. How does one deal with a family like this, where the majority are greedy, they desire and lust over other objects and other property. I remember sitting at family dinners with my fathers family, and they would constantly bicker about who would get what furniture when my grandfather and grandmother died. Who would get the apartment, the chairs, from the classic set, the old oak furniture, the grandfather clock.

I hope I am nothing like this at all.

Paternal Grandfather

2009-02-14T22:35:00.000-05:00

My paternal grandfather, my father's father, is an interesting character.

Certainly a man who has coasted through life comfortably without breaking sweat once. He is a selfish individual, without scruples, who has profited off the work of others. He is a shyster and definitely a man who has done enough to get by and to live comfortably without any real effort. While it is not definite, he certainly was unfaithful to my grandmother and would often hide behind the shroud of religiousness.

Born in the 1920s, my paternal grandfather had been born into a middle class family. His father, had been a resident of the country I grew up in, but none the less spoke a different language and had met his wife in another country. She had been a convert, which, saved her and her family in the war that would claim millions of lives of her fellow men and women. His father, had been an electrical salesman, operating a store that repaired and sold electric goods. He had two massive buildings in the Old Town square. My grandfather had grown up outside of the city I had been born in. He had grown up after the First World War, after the occupation of former armies and the Treaty of Versailles had granted independence to so many countries. He had learned the language of Germans, had traveled throughout Europe as part of the scout movement and had a comfortable life as an apprentice electrician.

After the invasion of Germany, and the eventual occupation of most of the continent, the German authorities had looked to sign the Volskdeutsche list, of those who had been Aryan enough to be deemed truly worthy. His father who had spoken German and for a family had had roost within the country; had decided to look into signing this list; contrasting my maternal family which had flatly refused. Due to my maternal grandmother's former religious convictions, the mother had not been deemed Nordic-Aryan enough to be deemed worthy.

His father did not sign the form, which would save the lives of all in the latter years following the war. None the less, my grandfather voluntarily took up a position as an electrician at a Forced Labour camp within the Ruhr. He was a paid worker, paid taxes and was not subject to the brutal inhumane treatment that many of the workers inside the camps had been.

While he did not declare fully what he did at the camps, he none the less produced the documents with the black eagle sitting on top of the swastika whenever he felt the party had been loosing some of its fun or mocking Hitler by putting his fingers in his nose, yelling loudly in German in order to gain laughs. For nearly sixty years after the war ended, he used my cousin to gain access to a pension he had worked up, due to his contribution to the war effort. The pension only stopped because my cousin who lived in Germany, had stopped wanting to be used as part of my grandfather's plan to gain a pension and he changed his address without telling him. Since my grandfather had listed his address as being that of my cousin.

He met my grandmother in the camps. She had been a forced labourer, and had been sent to slave away for the German war effort, unlike my grandfather who had voluntarily did it. As the war neared its end, the Western allies firebombed Germany to smitherenes, my grandmother had become pregnant and although my grandfather would not turn out to be a honest, reliable or trustworthy man in the future, he none the less married my grandmother. At a ceremony, after the war had finished and the Western Allies had entered the historic German borders. My uncle was born shortly after and their decision as to whether, they should stay, go to America or go back home had been made on the basis of a solitary fact.

Their return home, had been by all means assured, because my grandfather had been notified that while the communist authorities would reign supreme, some level of private ownership would be accepted and allowed. Small businesses would be allowed to run, and thus in the knowledge that he had not lost his possession or rather the eventual inheritance of his father, he returned to Poland, where they would eventually have two more children, a daughter and my father.

While everyone attests that my father had been different than his own, and had been even different than his own siblings, my grandfather's life although easy, has been driven by greed, comfort and the desire to have a lot without doing a single thing or even deserving it at all. While I do not deny that I must sound awful and quite cynical. I think it must be understood how much of a selfish man he is. After the death of my father, my grandfather left the homeland behind, to spend time in Western Europe, without sending any of the money back to his wife, without telephoning, writing letters or doing much for his grieving wife and mother of his recently deceased son. Not to mention that his wife would be involved in an accident which would lead her hip and leg to break, he did neither return nor show much interest about that.

I'm not him!

Phobia

2009-02-13T22:35:00.001-05:00

Unlike in the West, where I now reside, schooling did not start till the seventh year of ones life. Having moved from the home I had grown up in my home city, to a newly built apartment building in a totally new and different area of town, similar in style and architecture to the rest of the Soviet Bloc. I had missed much of the time that many of the other children had, who spent time in kindergarten. My constant perpetual state of sickness, added to the big move, further alienated me from a new school in a new neighbourhood.

Due to the nature of the 11th floor that we lived on, I have since been unable to unlearn and grow from my fear of heights. An irrational fear, which extends to being afraid of and being unable to go on more than two steps of a ladder. Feeling dizzy, when I watch a movie and someone looks out the window, and being generally scared when anyone is on a balcony or peers over the ledge, no matter how safe they may be.

It was during this time that the AIDS epidemic began to hit Eastern Europe. Although it had been around for a long time, the lack of attention and denial by the authorities had pushed it all under the carpet. The seemingly epidemic of drug culture becoming more visible in the collapse of the communist system only further made the whole affair seem much more visible. The general lack of education and the overall arrogance that had swept the West in the 1980s only began to attract the attention in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. I remember that the first time I heard of AIDS when Freddy Mercury died in 1991, I was six, and the communist system had almost collapsed in the U.S.S.R.

I remember vividly, much of that time; the Berlin Wall being torn down, the Gulf War, the West German winning their most recent World Cup.

My fear of the unknown began to take hold, more than ever than, at that early age. Of heights, of germs, of people. I had been told that after my nearly fatal accident, I was no longer the same baby as I had been, the death of my father only accumulated in this and helped to make, at least according to those who remembered a less than happy child. I no longer smiled at strangers and was generally more reserved, according to my family. How much of that holds water, I cannot say. None the less, I quite agree that it was during my young age that I began to see the world in quite a different way. Fearful of things I did not know, fearful of people that looked strange.

Mixed with the poverty that came out of the post-collapse of the 1989-1991 world, many young people became drug addicts, many of them becoming infected with AIDS, many of them resorting to busking and begging for change from equally impoverished individuals. At that point and time in my young life, without any real understanding, I had become fearful of these individuals. I was afraid to be near them for fear of getting disease, AIDS, their drug addiction or anything else they could infect me with. I simply did not understand, and yet I carried on.

While the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power plant had occurred a year after I was born, it none the less scared me. As, at the time, I remember hearing that the plant still produced power and that one of the other reactors had to be turned off. I remember hearing nuclear winter, and being scared of what that was without realization of what it actually meant. The fact that a massive blizzard hit my city the next day, only further worried me.

Perhaps my germophobia, had somehow been a result of the years of being sickly. I do not really know, none the less, it progressively got worse. It continued on, even after we had emigrated. Way into the late 1990s, and than, for whatever reason it stopped. Not all together, I still find that I pay close attention to my hands, and will wash any clothes before I wear them, whether or not they are second hand. However, I think the level of paranoia that I had felt towards germs, has been quite different than anything else. Perhaps fuelled by the environment that I had been living in. So many other things I think had a way of affecting me in terms of being worried about my health in such a paranoid way.

I think a level of not understanding fully the telelvision programs my mother had wanted me to watch, only further misconstrued and marred the lines. So much so, that any toy, any item of clothing, anything that I knew had been second hand, could not be anywhere near me, for fear of infecting me with germs.

That is no way to live!

Mother

2009-02-12T22:35:00.000-05:00

By the time 1989 rolled around, the socio-economic conditions in the country I had grown up in, had been becoming worse. Years of the centrally-planned command economy had brought no prosperity to the people. So mass demonstrations and protests became an every day occurrence. My mother, like my father had decided upon helping her family in the only honourable way she knew how. After being invited to Western Europe by my aunt, she went to work there, doing menial jobs at an inn my aunt owned, trying to save up as much money as she possibly could. I remember those months quite well. We lived with my mothers parents. While the life at my grandparents life was good, I still very much missed my mother. This was the place where she met her future husband, my step-father and my dad.

Upon her return, she came and showered us with many gifts. I none the less, remember knowing that those gifts would not take back those months that my mother had missed from my life. I was a sickly child at that age, I would attend kindergarten on a rather seldom interval. Becoming sick, quite easily and unable to go. Some of my earliest childhood memories had been of being sick, chickenpox, ear infections, pneumonia. Of having had to attend my mom's work, because I couldn't be at kindergarten.

I remember all those doctor visits, to my home, since where I lived they made house-calls, to all those times I had to attend some sort of a lab-test or a clinic. I remember being poked, prodded, have my blood, marrow and urine taken and tested.

All the medicines; ointments for my nearly fatal injury, syrups, pills, potential surgery to correct my breathing. The doctors attempted to diagnose me with all the potential problems under the roof. A speech impediment and stuttering that I suffered from, was thought to be a a sign of learning disability and a further potential sign of a mental deficiency. My asthma, was thought to be a matter of an easy surgery and removal of tonsils.

I remember that from an early age I was thought to be weak, due to all the problems that the doctors attempted to diagnose, which I have disproved. Colds would turn into pneumonia from the attempts by those close relatives around me to use menthol ointments on my chest.

Yet, I remember those summers very well, with quite a delight. My father, had bought a summer cottage at a nice little lake outside of the city we had lived in. It was a resort town of sort, that was used during the Second World War, for the German Army. He had won the money in a lottery, and decided upon buying the cottage to give us a place away from the hustle and the bustle of the city. It was a semi-detached cottage, with a neighbour who had emigrated to the West, but came back every summer to spend the holidays. The summers I spent, running around with the children next doors, had been some of my favourite in my life. On top of that, during the years before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, my grandparents had visited the state-owned resorts, where we would go and enjoy the sunshine and the good clean air, far away from home. The summers at the resorts ended when communism collapsed, but the cottage remained.

Even though I had strong allergies during the spring, I was none the less generally not affected during the course of the summer, and I was left to enjoy the time with my friends, with family, away from the city. I would run, bike, play in the forest, go swimming in the lake, go for long walks with friends, playing different games with the kids that had been around. I remember those summers well. I remember both the things we did when the sun was out and when it would rain and how much fun we had without the television present. It is often said that we remember the days long past as easy, but perhaps they had been.

I do not remember having much worry about the future when I was four years old.

Father

2009-02-11T22:35:00.000-05:00

Perhaps it is best, if I would start off at the beginning.

My father born in 1954, outside of the city I had been born in and grew up in. He was a sort of a renaissance man. He was talented in many different fields. He was a skilled painter, wood carver, metal smith; he was a kind individual, a gentle soul. He had an addictive personality, much like mine, he loved candy and sweets, which by all means was not a good thing in his condition. As far as I know, from what I've heard and learned, he was born with diabetis. He was shorter than I am, but a bit taller than my mum. Similarly, like the whole family, we all shared black hair. As to the colour of his eyes, I'm unaware of that.

My mother, born two years after my father in 1956 in the city I was born in, has grown up in a country unlike the one that exists today and that we live in today. She had been intelligent, but not academically inclined and for a long time up until her senior high school years, she did not get the highest marks she could have. She attended a specialized high-school, learned French. My father was the first man she kissed. Like me, she has curly hair, is of short stature and is rather stubborn. My mother, like most of her generation had become addicted to cigarettes at an early age. She still hasn't quit, even though that attempt has been going through phases over the last twenty-three years.

They married the day after Christmas in 1977. Their marriage lasted a short of ten years. However short, they had been brought two children into this world. My sister, born in the Summer of 1981, and myself, born in the summer of 1985.

My parents spared little to make sure that our lives would be a little better. The niece of my grandfather who had lived in Western Europe, had invited my father to work there, he did so on at least two occasions, leaving us behind for extended periods of time, especially at a time when food shortages had been already becoming unbearable and queues at stores extended to hours upon hours. My father had thought of escaping the life in the East and moving to the West, in not a splendid manner as it might pertain to movies, but through a series of legal moves that would grant him that possibility. Our ethnicity, would only help us be welcomed to the particular western country we would have emigrated to. My mother refused.

In 1986, I suffered from a serious life-threatening injury. The injury had been so severe that I had only been given ten percent chance of survival, none the less I pulled through, thanks to my uncle's effort to place me in a military hospital (due to his position as a rehabilitation therapist). At that same time I had developed a hernia and had surgery as a result.

A year later, nearing the tenth anniversary of my parents marriage, my father died, as a result of a stroke. I'm not certain as to why, how or what type of stroke it even had been. The only thing I know, is that my sister remembers the day because she had been taking a walk along the main river that runs through the city, being told that our father had been feeling really sick. He died in the spring time, he was only thirty-three.

The next decade would be hard on my mom.

Genesis

2009-02-10T22:35:00.000-05:00

I'm twenty four years old, or rather I will be come mid-august of this year. I was born in 1985, my family and I emigrated from the former Soviet Bloc to the Western Hemisphere, to seek a better life with better opportunities.

However, those opportunities and that batter life have come at a high cost. I suffer from a severe depression, and I have been, for at least the last ten years. My efforts to think positive, to stay motivated have been thwarted by the denial that I was suffering from a debilitating mental disease. I could not come to terms with that fact, simply because, I like many others, had stereotypical images filled in my head of what depression meant, all of which are just that. Stereotypes.

Stereotypes such as suicide, welcoming darkness, being always dark, negative, violent, filled my head. Quite on the contrary, I am nothing like this. I am, to reitarate a 24 year old, University student, who, while can achieve good grades, has never really tried in his life to get a good mark. I have a good family, two wonderful parents and a sibling. A family pet. Three cars, like all good Westerners should have, a big house, a big backyard, and the ability to do things that I sometimes like. I watch sports, watch movies, like music. I drink pepsi, eat pizza, and enjoy the holidays, just as much as anyone. I am no different than you, no better, no worse. Yet, something in my mind makes me feel that I am not worthy, and while I can say that I am no better or no worse; I none the less feel that everyday. My depression is not constant, it does not affect me every minute of every hour, but it's there. Nagging me, on the back of my mind. It does not go away, no matter what I do, no matter how far I run from it. It's in a perpetual state of existence. I do not know, whether my depression is caused by family and social environment, or a chemical imbalance in my brain. I will just state, how I see the world, how my counselor wants me to improve my life, and my feelings and opinions. I hope to gain a catharsis on my life, I hope to be able to not fear the future, more than ever, to not feel that I cannot accomplish anything, that I can be a person without a constant need to seek approval. I want to live my life to the fullest, I want to enjoy every waking moment without negative feelings attached, of desiring more from life.

Depression is no easy feat to conquer and for the last ten years that I have struggled with coming to terms with it, I have accomplished many feats, no matter how low my lows can go. I think, it's amazing how much a person can accomplish while suffering from severe depression, and that, above all the other things as my counselor stated, is only a further testament of what I will be able to do, when I do not have this crippling affliction barring me from my best.

While, one cannot beat a depression fully without the help of others. Family, counselors or God, the fact remains, that nothing can improve and be accomplished without full realization and coming to terms with the fact that one is depressed. Until a year ago, when I came to terms with the fact that I was depressed and sought help, the inability to fully pay for the sessions, since I was not covered, prevented me from seeking constant, uniform counseling.

On February the 10th, I had changed that. Sought counseling, which I will be attending on a uniform basis. This, blog will serve as a testament of my life in the next few months. Gaining a new perspective and a new lease on life. I want to be able to without any false hope, false sense of cheerfulness be free of negative feelings pervading my mind and afflicting me to the point that I can no longer function. I want to be free, and cured of this terrible affliction that so many young, old, men and women are suffering from.

While I will share my personal information, I want to remain anonymous, and will maintain a level of anonymity of those involved in this process. While my past, is my own, and is unique to this situation. I hope that by keeping anonymous, I can retain a certain level of the everyman feel to this blog. While, I do not think anyone can be cured from reading the words I type on to the screen and publish for the millions of people to see. Perhaps, this testament, will serve to acknowledge the fact that the affliction may be taking its toll on you or your loved ones.

Things cannot change, if you have no desire for them. You need to desire the change, in order for that change to become real. Nothing I can say or do, will change that. These words, while may serve some universal purpose cannot heal the problems you or your loved ones are facing.

Perhaps the desire is, to bring light onto a matter that so many people are afraid to speak out. So many people are paranoid to hear, and negative perceptions fill their heads when they hear the word depression. I hope that this blog, perhaps can help those who are suffering from the disease, to gain the courage to go and seek help. I want to show, who ever is willing to listen, that depression is not something so abstract, so limited, that it appears in the most exceptional differences. I am, everyone and anyone. I do not think that my life has been any harder or any easier than anyone elses, just different. In the end, its not what we do, but how we do it.

It's never too late!