Putting the Test in Testimony: The Darkness

Here’s another full disclosure statement.

I’ve made it pretty obvious in this post that I totally adore Ree Drummond. To the point where I lost physical control of my arms and mouth. And brain.

But there are probably four other people that if I came face to face with, I am quite sure I would lose control of my bladder in addition to the body parts listed above.

Those lucky four guys would be the members of Coldplay. They (tied with U2, which I hope I never meet in person because I would probably explode into sparkles of sheer happiness) are hands down my favorite band ever.

Back in my early days of motherhood, Coldplay songs were the soundtrack of my every day life. I used to sing Green Eyes to Anthony both in utero and rocking him to sleep at night as an infant. When he was a toddler, we added one of his favorites, Swallowed in the Sea, to the repertoire of good night songs. The poor kid could sing any Coldplay song on demand. So when I say that Coldplay was the soundtrack to my life, I literally mean I wore out those CDs. Chris Martin sang to us daily.

There is one song though, that means the world to me. It isn’t one of their biggest hits. It is one of their least well known songs called Amsterdam.

The lyrics of Amsterdam are the closest thing I have found to describing the hell on earth that is clinical depression (and in my case an accompanying anxiety disorder).

Come on, my star is fading
And I swerve out of control
If I, if I’d only waited
I’d not be stuck here in this hole.

When we last left off, I was becoming a very prideful, very perfectionistic, very critical woman who appeared to others as a complete sweetheart. I was being a total hypocrite. I was completely blind to my own problems, but saw clearly that everyone else had problems and I had all the answers. I was a walking example of Matthew 7:5, where Jesus says, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

In trying to make sure that I had control over everything and everyone, I was swerving out of control. I was hurting the man I loved most. I was putting distance between my kids and everyone else but me. I was the center of the universe of my own creation. But my star was fading, and fading fast.

The year before the darkness descended, there were signs that the stress of keeping up with this control freak mentality was taking a toll on me physically. I think the migraines were by far the worst. They were so painful, but as a mom, you don’t get a sick day, so I was popping Tylenol, Motrin and Advil constantly to dull the pain. I remember charting the migraines on a calendar and was surprised to see that I would have 2-3 migraines a week. They usually lasted about two days from start to finish. Which meant that on a good week, I would have 3 days of no headaches. On a bad week, I would have the headache in varying stages all week.

The only time I would be migraine free were  the “off days” of my birth control pill. So I just decided to stop taking them.

Looking back, I am not sure what happened. I’d been coming off and going on birth control pills for years, but this time, I had a really bad reaction.

It started with hot flashes and just a general unease emotionally. Then I started to throw up several times a day and could not eat without choking. I was suddenly having a lot of anxiety and fearful thoughts that I just couldn’t shake. Then leg tremors and terrible insomnia. Constant crying. A near constant paralyzing fear of just about everything, from going outside, to being alone, to being trapped in the house and even darker, more disturbing thoughts that I couldn’t even believe I was having. We called the ob/gyn, who said they had never heard of a reaction like that to birth control pills. I realized that I must be losing my mind, which was always my worst fear.

Come on, oh my star is fading
And I see no chance of release
And I know I’m dead on the surface
But I am screaming underneath.

I remember about two or three weeks after stopping the pill, in the midst of everything I described above, which was terrifying enough, Jason and I took the kids outside to splash in the puddles. All of a sudden, I realized that I felt absolutely numb. I felt no emotion at all except fear, but even that was dulled. I felt like my body was moving around but everything that made me “me” was gone. I couldn’t laugh or enjoy anything, not even my sweet kids jumping in puddles. I essentially felt dead throughout most of my being.

Jason was pretty alarmed at this sudden change, from capable, basically happy although super critical wife to sobbing, irrational mess. I did not know how to deal with myself. Accomplishing the simplest tasks felt like a never ending hike up a very steep mountain. What scared me the most was when I realized that I was getting really tired of trying to climb it.

He had me call a therapist that worked at our church. When she didn’t answer and it went to her voice mail, I left this sobbing message. She called back within an hour. We made an appointment for a couple days later.

At my first session, we talked for an hour. She asked me to describe how I felt to her. I quoted the only thing I could think of to describe the hell I was in: “ I know I’m dead on the surface. But I am screaming underneath.”

Dead from the depression that swirled around me like a thick, choking black fog, making me blind to reason and reality. Screaming because I wanted this to end and I saw no end to it. Screaming because I wanted to feel something again besides sadness and fear. Screaming because I wanted to be free from the dark, terrifying thoughts that intruded upon me with no warning, paralyzing me, making me fear what kind of monster I was becoming.

To be continued…