This is a personal story about an issue that's still being worked out. I share it to assure people that if they encounter the problems I did, they CAN find help. I hope people who find themselves in the story will be encouraged to seek help. It might do you more good than it did me...
I was first diagnosed with depression in 1996. Due to some factors not directly related to my treatment, I ended up quitting a job. I quit the medicine and felt better within days. There'll be a lot more about the whole episode later in this article.
I eventually ended up in Arkansas, working at a building products manufacturer. I have long enjoyed listening to NPR. One Friday I was listening to a program ("Fresh Air" or Diane Rheam) where the host interviewed a man who had written a book about his life dealing with depression. One thing he said caught my attention, and made me much more willing to accept the diagnosis when it was made again in early 2003.
He said one of the symptoms of his depression was feeling overwhelmed. You felt like you had too much to do and too little time to do it in. I could remember feeling like that a lot. Years of experience, however, had led me to understand that the problems weren't that bad when you actually tackled them. I'll have examples soon.
The second time I got the diagnosis, aided by what I'd learned in the interim, I began to see symptoms from early years. I began life as an energetic, outgoing, and somewhat precocious boy. As already noted in my brief biography I don't remember learning to read. I just got some books one day and started reading them. As I got into school I read voraciously. By the time I was in third grade I was reading Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories, intended to be read to children by an adult, and the same author's Bible Story, a similar ten-volume tome.
And here's where I pick up the first signs of depression. I used to awake at around 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, go to the living room, get out a book, and huddle in front of a heat register with a flashlight to read. One of the symptoms of depression is an interrupted sleep cycle.
Another memory that flashed to mind was the feeling I often encountered in eighth grade. I seemed to be having trouble feeling rested. There was always more to do than I had time for. And as I looked forward I could see no relief. Next I'd go to boarding high school (to stay in a church-based system), then to college, then on to work. The pressure would not decrease, it would increase. I occasionally despaired of ever making it successfully through life. Nowadays it's easy to recognize I was feeling the effects of depression.
I remained rather outgoing until I reached high school. Being one who matured late (didn't need to shave much until I was nearly 23) I was scholastically ready, but not physically or emotionally ready. I ended up as the butt of everyone's jokes. I was a geek and I eventually caught on. I thought at the time that I had, in response to the teasing, toned down my personality.
But looking back, the events of my freshman year were leading up to my sophomore year. After the first nine weeks of my sophomore year my parents moved to Utah, and I moved to a boarding school in Idaho. I had almost pulled a 4.0 during my freshman year, but at the new school my grades quickly dropped.
One of my keenest memories of that year was from literature class. The teacher occasionally called for "round robin" reading. I thought I was a good reader. In fourth grade the younger students used to move to our area to hear me read during reading class. I thought it was because I was so good. (Actually it's because I was in a Mississippi school having just moved from Michigan. I talked funny.)
But I did read well aloud. But not in literature class that year. I stumbled and paused just like the "dumb" kids I used to laugh at internally the year before. And other classes were similar. I even did poorly in Bible class, although as a preacher's kid I'd have to face up to dad on weekend leave.
I even developed some theories to explain my sudden loss of academic prowess. I really believed I no longer had it mentally. Not being aware of my illness, and not having access to treatment, it never dawned on me that there was a clear medical reason for how I was feeling.
The next two years I spent at an alternative boarding school that was not accredited. Since during my junior year I was on an up cycle, I rebounded. I thought I was responding well to the different kind of people attached to that school. But that summer it must have settled in again. I decided I didn't want to finish high school. My folks almost let me go ahead with my plan, but in the end they made me go to school.
By the end of my senior year I'd had a change of heart and decided to go on with my education in this alternative system. I remember I was a giddy idiot at my graduation (there were only two others in my class). That out of proportion emotional response was almost certainly a result of my disorder.
Some highlights of my nearly three years at the alternative college in Colorado involved my occasional reticence to do what I was told. One particular feeling I recall surrounded a supervisor's intention to get better control of tools and materials. He instituted a checkout system with accompanying paperwork. I resented this. I didn't like resenting it. And I certainly didn't know why I resented it. And I ended up with the job of tending to the parts cage because of a finger injury.
Then there were the incidents surrounding work on the new church the institution constructed while I was there. When they first started the project I wanted to work on the church crew. And I got put there. But the same supervisor wanted me on a different crew and made me work there despite my wishes. That's when I worked for the six-foot plus man and learned to step lively just to keep up.
Eventually, however, work for that crew dried up, and I got sent to the automotive shop. Now up until then I'd had only occasional exposure to auto mechanics -- most of it with my dad. But I soon became the institution's automotive expert. I liked the job and wanted to stay there. But then the boss told me to go to work on the church. That's the day I sabotaged many of the institution's vehicles, and refused to work. Why so obstinant? Today I have a better understanding.
After I left there I spent two years at home. Leaving for home in southern Utah led to a major disappointment. My parents were moving back to Michigan. With few options, I moved with them. I didn't see the sun for about two months, and I wanted out. I went back to Colorado and lived with an older farm couple for about four months. Of course now I know why the lack of sunshine bothered me so much.
I then returned to Michigan and landed a job at a gas station on the town's main drag. I worked the drive, sometimes at morning, and sometimes at night until closing. While I was still working there I landed a weekend job at a local radio station. But I longed for something more permanent. And then there arose a "dream" opening. A religious station in nearby Grand Rapids advertised for someone to work four nights a week.
I spent a week in training. But the first night things were actually my responsibility I struggled. I thought my problem involved the unmarked music library from which you were expected to pick very tighly formatted music. I also thought my problems involved how the job dwindled from four nights a week to only two. These were factors, of course, but because I was depressed they overwhelmed me.
The day after that first shift I went in to collect my FCC license. One of the owner's grandsons tried to talk me into staying, but I stood firm and left. That did, however, open a new door for me. A few weekends later I asked my boss at the local station about an opening he'd mentioned that I had turned down because I was planning to start work in Grand Rapids.
He seemed excited. The opening was still available, he said. Within a week I was doing morning drive on a 50,000 watt FM station licensed to Grand Rapids. At that time I had only a few months' part-time experience, and I had to be taught some of the more obvious requirements of morning drive radio. I got the job because the station was about to be sold, and the owner just needed someone reliable until the sale. At reliability I excelled.
After the sale I got a full-time position at the original local station. But other events were afoot. Right after the Grand Rapids "wipeout" my mother suggested I go to college. She even took me to college days at Andrews University, the school my dad had attended to qualify for the ministry. I looked at the students and decided I wasn't cut out for college. Based on my experiences at the alternative schools, I believed I would do best at more practical, hands-on enterprises.
When the next school year rolled around, however, I went to college. I'd been admitted to the college of arts and sciences, not the the college of technology I had wanted to attend. I could easily have changed it, but I was too lazy. One particular experience I recall was the comment of my academic advisor. All freshmen came a week early and took part in numerous tests and evaluations.
Since I had no inkling what I wanted to take, I was assigned to an advisor for "undecided" students. I was hoping to get some direction on what I was best suited to study. But when she looked at my scores and personality test results she said, "You can do anything you want!" Great help! What she really meant was that if I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or even a musician I had the scholastic capacity to pull it off.
With my experience in the media, I eventually signed up for a journalism major. What I actually ended up with was a major in mass media, emphasis in journalism, with a music minor with voice as my performance emphasis. I toyed with quitting after two years, but that would have involved processing extra paperwork. I was so lazy I ended up with a bachelor's degree.
Although I now had a better, more stable self-image, I still wrestled with depression. Holiday breaks were worst. Because I'd gotten a part-time job at a radio station in nearby Benton Harbor, I spent a lot of them at school. I recall once being so depressed (I might even have called it that at the time without understanding that I was clinically depressed) that I called up a girl I hardly knew and asked her out. We ended up not going to the event (I think it was cancelled) but I insisted on meeting her anyway.
Maybe I need to explain that. The young lady in question worked at the cafeteria so I had seen her quite often, and I made it a point to know as many of the 2000 or so students at that university. But the "date" was a very spontaneous thing and I never followed up on it. The point was that I was trying just about anything to deal with my feelings -- feelings caused largely by my depression.
I recall one quarter when I was taking technical math. I never officially got beyond freshman algebra and sophomore geometry in high school, but I generally grasped everything in this class. Once, however, I had done rather poorly on a test, and I recall feeling that I was just barely getting by. With so much to do, how could I put the time into this math class to excel? Depression at work again.
Then there's the picture of me they put in our senior annual. They had caught a picture of me sleeping in the student lounge (sitting up, of course). My sleep patterns were still disrupted, and I had developed the ability to nap. By then I was being plagued by an inability to stay awake at certain times.
I began dating the daughter of someone my mother had worked with before she got married. I still recall quite vividly the strange emotions attached to anything that had to do with her (especially her home some fifty miles west of Chicago). I thought this was how all lovers felt. But now I know it was just more depression.
After college I had thought I might find a job at a newspaper. But I didn't have the kind of experience in that field that I had in broadcasting. After turning down a full-time job at a station in my folks hometown (by now in the UP -- Michigan's upper peninsula), I eventually ended up in Pennsylvania's northern tier. While I had sort of been out on my own previously, it had never been so far from home or school. I coped by taking a lot of walks around the mountains of the New York / Pennsylvania border.
One stark memory involved my emotions when I first entered the station I would work at for the next fourteen months. Based on the description given by the man who recruited me, I was expecting a relatively nice office-type setting. The station was at the end of a hallway on the second floor of an old downtown building. The hallway floors were bare, unpolished wood. The restrooms were ancient. The studio console was from the 1950s or before. All in all it had a rather grungy aura.
And then there was the policy book. Every employee was required to read through the policy book every six months. But this was no ordinary employee handbook. It was a three-ring collection of memos and directives, with only marginal organization. And it was thick. Being depressed caused me considerable distress in confronting "the book."
But again my skills bailed me out. Within months a ten-year veteran left, and I got his morning drive slot. And when the news director got laid off, they wanted to call me the news director. It is probably another evidence of my depression that I refused the title and instead called myself "acting news director."
During my stay there the girlfriend mentioned earlier found someone else. She didn't tell me at the time, and I remember being so shocked that I didn't even cry. I accepted a coworker's invitation to go to a library sale in Ithaca, and bought a book about the '72 election, and maps of a Texas city where I had taken an abortive job in a radio station right after I graduated.
My next move took me to Newark, New York (and no, it's not anywhere near New York City) where I stayed for over five years (most of the last two part time). I was hired as news director, so I couldn't refuse the title. But I had no budget and no wire service. A couple of incidents come to mind.
Once I wrote a proposal for putting the station on-the-air 24 hours a day. It invovled me pulling the "graveyard" shift and preparing for my morning drive newscasts in the process. It was my proposal, so the program director figured I'd go along when he got it approved. I don't remember why, but I refused. It made him very mad (we're still friends) and I believe now that my depression had caused the emotions that led me to refuse my own idea.
Then there was the time I was offered a part-time position at a clear channel station in Rochester. A job there was the obvious next step up for a news specialist like me. I gave two excuses for not accepting the "offer." First was the station's tenuous committment to accuracy. And there was my boss's insitence that I use a different air name there. I now believe those were just excuses to cover up to myself that depression had scared me away.
After three years a man I'd worked with arranged an ideal job for me at a station he had started working for in New Hampshire. I went through the motions until the job was mine for the taking. While I didn't know it then, my depression kicked in big time and made me seriously frightened of the change. I felt so bad I called the preacher (he served a church in Rochester and the small church near Newark) to get his advice. His advice was to quit radio altogether. He obviously didn't understand how addicting radio work is.
But I did go back to college. This was my first experience outside the educational system of my church. The fact that I was able to excel there convinced me my church oriented education had not been second rate. I had decided to follow up on an earlier idea and study for elementary teacher certification. And I was about to smash head on with my depression in a way I'd never experienced it before.
After the first year I was ready for a semester of student teaching. SUNY Geneseo arranged two placements for their students. While a semester is usually fifteen weeks plus finals, student teaching took sixteen weeks, two eight-week assignments. The first one had me in a sixth-grade classroom with a screamer. I did well. The second put me in a second-grade classroom with a demanding professor supervising. I had heard a lot of things about him, and I indulged in a little fear and trepidation. The professor turned out to be fairly easy to deal with. But the students and the teacher were another story.
In eight weeks I lost 20 pounds (because I had little appetite) and I only barely survived, mostly through stubbornness. The teacher signed my recommendation with "serious reservations." She really felt I was not qualified to work with second-grade students. Now, of course, we know depression was doing its dastardly work.
Not being an aggressive job-seeker, I spent the next year and a half substitute teaching all over the Finger Lakes region. Some of the elementary experiences (particularly a 5-week stint covering for a teacher's maternity leave) brought back the fears and inadequacy of the last half of student teaching. But other experiences were quite a high. I especially recall covering for a band teacher at a junior high school. I had great fun conducting the band. At lunch the principal revealed that they usually sent the band to a library study hall when the regular teacher was out, but they'd had enough experience with me to believe I'd do OK in the band room (how they thought I had musical expertise is still beyond me).
My dad was still a preacher, and he was influential in getting me a position in the same system that had educated me years earlier. About the same time I met and got engaged to a divorcee in Arkansas. That could easily be an intense study into the effects of depression. We got married at Christmas and I moved her to the wintery UP where I'd already been teaching at a new school.
We stayed there for three years, using the summers to attend Andrews University where I completed my denominational teaching certification and eventually earned a Masters in curriculum and instruction. At the end of the third school year the school board and church board decided they didn't have enough money to make a go of the school.
My next assignment was at Mio, the school where I'd done second and third grades. It was in a different building then, but some of the same people were in the church and remembered me. I had four fine years there. There was the one incident in which I began the year with only three students. I called my superintendant to see what they wanted to do about it. Another school had an opening, and the teachers there knew me and wanted me as a colleague. Plagued by depression, however, I was unable to make a decision, so it was made for me and I stayed in Mio.
Another symptom of depression frequently came to the forefront there. In the afternoon I often had difficulty staying awake. The kids who were there can tell you that I often dozed off at the teacher's table. And I was increasingly ill. Twice I went to a walk-in clinic seeking a solution. The first time the doctor told me I had cholesterol problems. (I'm now being treated for it.) The second time the doctor spent nearly an hour with me and failed at finding a problem. I'm quite sure now the problem was depression.
And then the really big one hit. That will take a lot of time and require another page.