Giving Expression to Depression...

At one time or another we all get depressed. Whether over a love gone bad or just life in general. Usually it is only a few hours or a day or so we are depressed over something. It is when it becomes weeks then months that depression is a cause for concern.

Just over eight years back I wasn't doing so badly at the time. Even though my home had months before burnt to the ground I had mostly gotten over losing everything I had collected over my life. Then on my way to work a car crossed over the double yellow line coming from the opposite direction. It appeared at first that the car was passing illegally. Not the case, the driver had passed out behind the wheel of her car and fallen over on her right side. She wasn't wearing a seat belt either which is why she must have fallen so far over that she wasn't visible as her car hit mine.

That one accident has left me in pain ever since. The damage to my back left me unable to stand for long periods of time without suffering pain for days on end when I stand in one place too long. At the time of the accident I didn't realize just how badly my back had been hurt. It took five months to find out just what had been damaged then an operation to remove some of the disk.

I thought I would be able to return to work within months at the most. I was wrong. That was eight years ago this last September and I still have not been able to work a so called regular type of job. I've had two operations on my back the first to remove extruded material from L-5, then one to completely remove disks C-5 and C-6 and replace and fuse them. Also a titanium plate was added to keep the area from moving after the fusing.

I've always been able to return to work soon after being injured. I broke a vertebra in my middle back in a patrol car accident when I was with Gwinnett County Police in 1976. I was back at work within two months.

This time it was different. When I finally realized I would not be going back to work and couldn't find a way to earn a living it hit me hard. I didn't realize just how hard until I was so depressed I wanted to die rather than continue not to be a wage earning person. From the time I graduated from high school I have worked. Not just one job but mostly one full-time and several part-time jobs. If not for someone else then in my basement doing leather work or candle making to earn extra money.

I felt worthless not being able to go to work each day. It didn't matter that my back hurt so much at times I'm barely able to walk around my residence. It didn't matter that it wasn't my fault that I couldn't work. It was that I couldn't work and support myself and help my daughter with her son, my grandson  at the time.

The day I walked into the state run mental health building was hard for me to do. I had been a macho cop. Cops don't go to mental health they grin and bare it. They keep going no matter what has happened to them or people around them. If you go to a doctor for mental help then you are an outcast. You are suspect from then on by other cops for not being mentally fit to do your job. It is a stigma to have mental problems even though so many police officers become drug addicts or alcoholics because of the pressure on them from their jobs. I had friends who committed suicide because it became more than they could bare to live with what they faced every day as a cop on the street.

When I realized I needed help though it was hard for me to ask for it I did. Guess being alive meant more to me than the stigma of being crazy did. I had not done any art since the accident and art has always been a passion of mine my whole life in one way or another. A couple of friends asked me to join them for a day in the country close after I started going to mental health. We rode north to his step-father's place where we ended up spending the night because it started snowing.

That night I watched it snow from the second story window while laying in bed. I found myself within a snow flake that morning. It was an awakening. I felt a renewal of life within me. When I returned to the home, where I was living with friends, that day. I opened Photoshop and started creating mandalas using a template within PS. For the next month I created mandalas from slices of photos. My friend who had shown me the site from which to obtain the template and instructions to create them in PS asked how many I had done that month. I had created over six thousand. She said she had created maybe sixty in the same time.

While I was going to mental health one of the doctors asked to see my work. I showed her one of my first works after I restarted working in art. It was dark and foreboding as were most of my first attempts at expressing my feelings. Then they started being filled with light and you could see a blossoming of spirit again within my work. In less than two months I had created over ten thousand mandalas. I would sit down at my computer and start creating. When I would finally get up from my seat I would have created from one hundred to a thousand mandalas.

So art and medication and being able to talk with doctors about my feeling worthless finally brought me out of depression. I continued to take the meds until I moved to where I am today. I ran out because I didn't have the money to buy more nor a way to get to my doctor to renew my prescriptions. Guess I had gotten to a place in my life where I didn't need the support of the meds to continue feeling up beat even when I had little to eat other than beans and corn. At least I had that to eat, many don't have that.

These days I take my photos, work on them on this computer, create art on it and write these articles that I post on Gather. As with everyone I have my days of being depressed but not like I once did when I felt that life wasn't worth living. I come back here and open the photos I take and work on them. That uplifts my spirits to where I forget the pain of being alone and the physical pain. I no longer get depressed like I did five years back. I lose my self in creating to forget the pain my back is in all the time. I lose myself in doing photography when I get the chance to travel to the near by parks. I may suffer from more pain by walking all over the place but it is worth the pain to see what I have photographed later on when I open it on my computer.

Depression creeps up on you. You never see it coming then you are so deep within its clutches. The panic attacks are horrible to go through. You feel like nothing can fix what you feel. You want to curl up in a corner and let the world forget you ever existed. You want to forget you ever existed as well. You don't want to feel anything because if you feel it hurts too badly to want to move from the dark corner you have hidden yourself within. Like I said we all get depressed, it is when you become so depressed that life is a burden that you need help. It is when depression has control of your life and you can't see a way out that you need to ask for help. No one needs to suffer that way. No one should suffer that way.

If you have a friend who is depressed or is suffering from panic attacks. You can't force them to go for help. I would not have let anyone give me help until I realized just how badly I needed the help. It took me getting to the point I wanted to end it all that I knew I needed professional help. Not everyone goes for help. Some end their lives because they don't find their way to help. While you are in the depths of depression seeking help is far from what you are wanting. You are wanting for it all to end by any means possible.

I'm no professional by any means and I sure don't know how to help others out of depression but if you are depressed and are reading this by all means go for help. There are many people who will give you the help and support you need to end the feelings you are having right now. I'm not going to tell you it will stop over night, it takes time to over come the depression, that pit of hell you have fallen into. I know it may be discouraging to go for help and it doesn't stop hurting right then. You have to hang in there because one day it will stop. It will lessen over time. You will find yourself once again and come out of the darkness. Light will fill your days once again.

For me it was my art that helped me come out of the depths I had fallen into over the months of not being able to do the many things I once could do. I have added some of my art that I created during my worst times and then the mandalas which show when my light returned. I hope they help you see where I had been and where I am these days.

Everyone has their own way of healing. Mine was through art and expressing my feelings from within and showing it visually. I hope this helps someone who needs it to go for the help they need. Also to those who have never been depressed clinically I hope it may give insight into what it feels like to be where I once was.