It’s Friday morning and I try again to wake her up. I wait and see if she is able to get up this morning to go to school. It is the fifth day she’s missed school this week. It’s been a week of trying to get her up to send her to school. The school psychologist has been communicating with me via email everyday this week to help and give me advice in how to get my child up. Nothing has worked so far. It’s now Friday and I’ve failed at every attempt. I’ve come to the conclusion that she really is not able to get up mentally, physically and the spirit in her is allowing this experience for now. I am too.
I email the school psychologist and share with her my thoughts at the moment. I ask that we take a break and allow my daughter to heal for now. Forcing her to get up and attend school is beating the purpose of the healing process. I suggest to the school psychologist that when she feels better, we’ll try again. The school psychologist agrees with me.
As I look at my daughter covered underneath the blanket I wonder about the depth of her depression. I cannot see her wound or whatever it is that keeps her in bed all day. Depression is hard to look at because you cannot see the wound. The pain is inside and it must turmoil.
I have asked friends who suffer from depression about the deep experience of this illness. Why it’s so difficult to get up from bed and days go by not leaving the house. This is depression, they tell me. It’s like being stuck in mud and you cannot get out of it because you are so stuck in the thickness of it, explains a friend. Another describes it as having a castnet over you and you are desperately trying to get out of it. These metaphors help me understand their experience a bit clearly. However, I don’t really know what anything is like unless I have experienced it myself.
To help me understand and become compassionate about this illness, I use my imagination. I imagine my daughter has a broken leg and she simply cannot get up for days. Her leg is in a cast and she is unable to get up and go to school. This could take weeks to months to recover from a broken leg. As in having a broken leg, a healing period is needed with the aid of therapy. All kinds of therapy including seeing a medical doctor for remedies. There is something broken in her anatomy and it needs to be healed.
When someone has a broken leg, we do not ask them to get up and function in their lives as they normally would when healthy. Yet, we seem to be quick to expect those with mental illness to be cured quickly and be up and running around as usual.
The image of my daughter with a broken leg has helped me shift in how I see depression. Using this imagery as a tool has allowed me to understand the illness better. One who suffers from mental illness does not need to be rushed while in the healing process. I cannot see the bleeding from the wound but I am becoming better at accepting this illness for what it is. It is mental illness. As I mentioned in my earlier statement, the infliction is severe and it must be as painful as when one has a severe physical illness.