Thursday, December 24, 2015

I'd Like One Christmas Miracle, Please.

Christmas is tomorrow and to use a much overused phrase, I'm feeling all the feelings. It's going to be an interesting Christmas, for sure. I'm not really sure how to feel about it.

On the one hand, for the first time in months I feel amazing. Last September I started weaning myself off what I thought was an extra antidepressant I didn't need to be on. (You may remember me complaining about withdrawal. Often.) Well, turns out I really did need to be on it. Once the withdrawal symptoms finally subsided, new but equally unpleasant symptoms showed themselves. I was not in a good place. I was most often angry, bitter, annoyed, anxious, and often overwhelmed with feelings of hopelessness. I didn't get back on the medication right away for reasons I won't go into *coughObamacare* but finally I decided enough is enough and got back on it. Literally within a day I felt like a new person. Like my old self. I'd forgotten what it felt like to laugh and smile, to feel happy and normal, to want to get out of bed and do stuff, to get on Facebook and Instagram and smile at the posts and "like" them instead of rolling my eyes and thinking things I'm ashamed of. I am so eternally grateful for modern medicine and self-revelation that showed me what I needed to do.

Yet as I'm skipping through my sunny days now, I watch my own sweet mother spiral ever downward and I've never felt so scared and helpless in my life. Many of you know the severity of her struggles of late but many of you don't. I haven't spoken much publicly about it to respect her privacy, but as time goes on the secrecy just seems silly and frankly, she needs all the prayers and good thoughts she can get. Besides, if she had some serious physical, medical ailment, there would be no secrecy at all, so why should this be any different?

For the last month or more she has been being treated for severe depression at Sacred Heart in Spokane. She is home now but returns once a week for electroshock therapy treatments. So far she's had 12 with no sign of improvement and we're not sure what the next step is. We pray, we fast, we pray some more. We research online and talk to friends and family who've gone through similar things. We talk to doctors, psychiatrists, therapists, etc. We try it all. And when nothing changes, we try not to lose hope. But it's hard. It's so very, very hard.

So you see, I'm not sure what to feel about Christmas this year. How can I be excited and happy when my mom is suffering so agonizingly? What we need is an honest to goodness real life Christmas miracle. If you're the praying type, and feel so inclined, please pray for my angel mother. Maybe with enough prayers we can get that miracle after all.