An Analysis of the Year and Reflections on Mental Illness and Trials

This post is going to be a summary of what's been going on since the beginning of the year and what I learned from it. It's long (sorry-not-sorry), but I hope that I'll be able to look back on this time and appreciate that I'm better for what I've been through. I'm sharing because I think it's therapeutic to write about it and I've been feeling prompted lately to share my story so more people can understand depression and recognize it in themselves or others.

Last fall Ryan told me that he had decided to apply for a new job. He wasn't happy teaching whiny, unmotivated students, and it was becoming clear that the university had organizational problems, which means that even though the department would have loved to hire him for a tenure-track position, the university wasn't going to let them open up a new position in the department.

He proceeded to make a list of postdoc listings that he was interested in, submitted about four applications, and in particular he put a lot of work into applying for a very competitive NASA fellowship. But then the semester continued and he was very busy, and for some reason whenever he tried to apply for jobs he couldn't get himself to start. And yet he kept having a feeling from the Spirit that it was going to be okay and he would get a job (which was sort of hard to believe when he hadn't applied for many jobs).

Then in February Ryan got the best email ever offering him a job for the NASA fellowship in Maryland. It was an incredible blessing that we were so thankful for. I knew that it was going to bring many challenges with getting ready to move and trying to sell our house, but I was also so excited for Ryan because this job will open many opportunities for him.

We made a goal to list our house for sale on Memorial Day weekend, so the next couple of months I worked my tail off packing up everything but the essentials and moving it into the garage so our house would look more open, and painting all three bedrooms, both bathrooms, and almost all the baseboards, trim, and doors. When we left the house for the photographer, I was completely shocked at how much I had done and that I had gotten everything done in time.

The photos were absolutely beautiful, and after doing a little more organizing, we left for the weekend to look at houses in Maryland. I remember as we left the house, I had such a peaceful feeling that things would work out and we would be able to sell the house.

Our first day looking in Maryland was pretty discouraging. Getting into a good school district was a top priority for us, but housing prices are much higher in Maryland, and the houses in good school districts that were in our price range weren't in good shape. On Saturday night I said my prayers and had a feeling that going to church the next day would help. It did. Not that it specifically helped us find a house, but we loved the ward we attended, and renewing our covenants and feeling the spirit helped us.

In the evening we did some research and found a couple of houses that looked like good possibilities. So on Monday morning we went to the first house, and we loved it. We had such a good feeling about it that we decided to make an offer and not bother looking at the other houses. The offer was accepted even though we didn't have our house under contract in Georgia, so we were excited about that.

We had many showings in our Georgia house, but no offers for quite a while. We did get a good offer, but then the buyer changed their mind after looking at another house. Then we got a rather insulting offer ($10,000 below our asking price, plus closing costs and asking us to replace the roof), and they never got back to us after we gave a counteroffer. I was able to remain hopeful for the first few weeks, but as it took longer and we didn't have the house under contract, I was more frustrated. Our realtor was good to pass us feedback from the people who were interested in the house, so we made more updates and fixes based on that feedback, but honestly after a while the feedback started to hurt my feelings because we worked dang hard to make the house look nice and all they could see was that the kitchen was old. It was a ton of work to get the house perfectly cleaned up and staged every time we had people coming to look at the house, and for some reason the most annoying thing to me was hiding all the trash cans. I couldn't wait until we didn't have to pretend we didn't make trash anymore. Also, the kids really weren't any help, so I was pretty much doing it on my own.

I tried to rely on my faith and the things I know help me when things are difficult. Going to the temple helped me a lot. Once, I went to the Atlanta temple, and it was interesting because the traffic was so bad that it took me an hour to go about ten miles, and I missed the last endowment session. But it turned out to be a good thing because I was able to do initiatories and sealings, and what I really needed that day was a reminder of the promises of strength and that my eternal marriage and family are the entire reason for this life.

I was also discouraged because two of my friends in my neighborhood were also selling their houses, and they had contracts within a couple of days of listing their houses, while ours sat there for a couple of months.

Then finally we had a great offer: our asking price and no closing costs. The timing was going to work out so that our Georgia house would close a week after we closed on the house in Maryland. We were so grateful, and it seemed like things were falling into place perfectly. I worked on getting the rest of the house packed up, and we tried to enjoy the last weeks we had with our friends. Ryan was teaching a summer semester. We had a stipend for movers to load the truck and take it to Maryland, which was fantastic.

So truck-loading day came, and it went well. The next day Ryan gave his final while I worked on getting the house really clean. Then that afternoon we got a call from our realtor, and it turns out that the buyers had decided not to buy the house. It was understandable, because they were an older couple and were realizing that keeping up a yard was going to be too hard for them, but to have it fall through at the last minute like that was hard. We did get the earnest money from that, so we figured that would cover another month of mortgage payments, and we could put it up for sale and hopefully get another offer.

Then we drove up to Maryland with our cars stuffed to the brim, and what I didn't know until we stopped for dinner was that on the way there, Ryan found out that the lending company had decided not to approve the loan for our house in Maryland. Apparently the underwriter didn't look at the loan until the last minute and decided that Ryan's income was classified as a gift, not income. They had all this information since May, so it was totally irresponsible of them to wait until the last minute to make that decision.

So now everything was up in the air, and it felt like everything I had done since February was for nothing. Instead of everything falling into place, we now had both of our house sales fall through within a couple of days, and we were living in a hotel. I had tried so hard to be faithful and trust in God through all of the hard things that happened this year, but at that point I felt abandoned.

One nice thing was that we were able to find a town home to rent where we were allowed to have our cat. It wasn't the house and yard we were hoping for, but it does have a grassy field and a walking trail in back and it was in a nice neighborhood with very highly rated schools. We decided to take it rather than try to find a different lender and buy the house.

When the movers showed up with our truck, I had a really, really hard day. They had to move everything into a different truck because the truck wouldn't fit into the court where our town home was, and then when they started bringing in the furniture it was hard because I didn't know where things should go. I had been planning on a different house layout and a garage. I had meticulously labeled every box with which room it should go in. Our furniture wasn't going to fit in this house. For some reason, after everything else, it caused something to snap, and I had my first experience with anxiety. Not fun. 0/5 stars, do not recommend. I barely kept it together. I made it through most of the day, but eventually I had to leave. I took the kids to the park and just sat there dealing with the anxiety.

I did a little better once everything was unloaded. The piano was in place, and I realized I knew exactly which box had the piano books, so I pulled them out and had a lovely time. It felt great. The movers were upstairs with Ryan putting the beds together, and apparently they told Ryan that they could see why he married me. :)

The next day, I woke up motivated. I got the kitchen unpacked really fast. Then I unpacked the books. You might laugh at my priorities, but with bookshelves in place and book boxes unpacked, I was able to free up a lot of space, and it started to feel like home.

After that it was a couple of hard months. First I threw out my back again. About all I could do was walk. And the kids were excited to see all their toys again, so they unpacked them all and made a huge mess. It took a month before I was healed enough to deal with the disaster, and even then I had to take it easy. Physically dealing with living in a town home is hard because of all the stairs. I hate getting home with a car load of groceries and then having to go up and down stairs to bring them all in. I've had times where I had to go downstairs, get the stroller, carry the stroller upstairs, then carry the stroller down the outside stairs just so we could go for a walk. Then I got a massive traffic ticket. Let's just say it was all a recipe for stress-induced depression.

I'm gradually wading out of it all, but I got into a pretty bad place at one point. I had a few times when I couldn't get out of bed, and many other days when I couldn't make dinner or deal with the kids at all. I was seriously considering driving to Utah with just Ruby and asking my Aunt Colleen to let me stay with her for a few weeks. All I knew was that I didn't want to do this anymore.

It took Ryan pointing out that this wasn't just stress and overwhelm, this was depression. And I think acknowledging that was the first step.

I also found a chiropractor to help me with my back. Even a month after the injury, I was still having problems, so clearly I needed more than just rest. He helped me a lot with a combination of adjustments and physical therapy. I have stretches that I do every day to help things stay aligned properly. I went into his office feeling like I was going to be slightly crippled and have neck pain for the rest of my life, but now I feel like I can have a normal life again. I had no idea how much my shoulders had been hunched forward until he showed me what neutral posture should look like.

I also started working more systematically on getting our house in order. The first step was to take away about 80% of the toys and lock them in the storage room. It's still a mess, but it's much better, and it's mostly contained upstairs. Then I've started working through our possessions by category. I started by going through the kids' clothes, throwing away worn out clothes and making sure the kids had enough clothes that fit. Once the kids had less toys, they started trying to use the baby girl clothes as toys (ugh), so I actually ended up getting rid of about two garbage bags of clothes that were too small for Ruby as well. I saved one bin with my favorite outfits and took two garbage bags of clothes to GoodWill. That was kind of hard, but I knew that we need to have a lot less stuff in order to restore some sanity to my life, and now that the clothes are gone I'm glad I did it. I also re-packed a couple of boxes of books that I know we won't be reading in the next few years. Right now I'm working on dealing with all of the paper clutter in the house and setting up a "command central." The plan is to have the computer, paper shredder, and file cabinet in a central, organized location. I bought a desk organizer as well to hold office supplies and papers like receipts and bills that we don't need to keep long-term but need to hold for a while. I also have a shelf set up to hold the kids' backpacks (Heidi says I need to write bookbags because apparently we're Southern now) and some folders with school papers we want/need to keep.

I'm trying to start exercising again. It's not perfect. It's only a few times a week. But I tell myself to feel good about that because it's better than the nothing that I was doing. It does help improve my mood.

I've implemented some routines. One is that I spend some time cleaning the kitchen after breakfast. I do better at the beginning of the week because I'm rested from the Sabbath, so Monday I mop the floors. I'm working on having a routine of starting to make dinner around 4:30. I've also been doubling recipes and putting half in the freezer so I can have something to pull out on the days when I'm not doing well.

I'm working with a doctor on adjusting medication and finding a therapist. There have been some struggles with that too. The first thing we tried was increasing the dosage on the medication I've been taking since a little after Ruby was born. I saw little to no change for the first two weeks after the higher dosage. I had a follow-up with my doctor, and when I told her I really felt like I needed to try either a higher dosage or a different medication, she told me she wanted me to try increasing my exercise, using calm.com, and finding a therapist first. I agree that sometimes therapy and coping mechanisms are the best place to start, but I feel like I'm so deep in it right now that it's hard to even use the coping mechanisms. I feel like what I need is an adjustment in medication to get me back up to a point that I can use coping mechanisms and therapy to deal with the rest, if that makes sense. It kind of felt like going to the emergency room with a broken leg and having them say, "Well, let's get you into physical therapy first, and once you're at the point where you can run again we'll talk about setting your leg."

Well, week three of a higher dosage on my medication was even worse. I was just paralyzed from the depression. Even on a good day it felt like I was moving in molasses. It took a lot of mental effort to do even small things. I also wasn't sleeping deeply or well. At the end of the week I realized this was probably the effect of my medication. I know you're not really supposed to do this, but I decided to go back down to my original dosage. I did make an appointment with my doctor the next Monday, but I didn't want to deal with this any longer than I had to. A week later I was already seeing an improvement.

Christmas has been hard. I had to lower a lot of my expectations over the course of the month because, like I said, doing things was like moving through molasses. I wanted to do a lot more than I did. Fortunately, I got the Christmas shopping done pretty early, so that was helpful. It took us a couple of weeks to get the tree all decorated. But Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were fun. I spent the day making treats with the kids on Christmas Eve, and we had a wonderful Christmas. I really enjoyed seeing the kids have so much fun with the things I chose for them. I love the afterglow of the present-opening when the kids are exploring their new things. I just sat and enjoyed watching it all while Ruby snuggled with me holding her new doll from Grandma Great. We got five new games this year and started learning how to play them.

The one thing that has gone really well is making friends. Our ward has some truly wonderful people. There were several people who immediately befriended me and tried to make us feel welcome, and there are a few people who know a little about my challenges and have been so good to reach out and ask how I'm doing and offer support. I try to take advantage of opportunities to be with friends at church as often as I can, because they have a special light that lifts me up.

I also joined the Washington DC Temple Choir, and it's been one of the things that's helped me through. It's an incredibly uplifting group, and singing Christmas songs for the past few months and having something that's just for me has been really helpful. I enjoyed our concerts immensely. I actually was able to briefly meet Elder Rasband and his wife at the lighting ceremony at the temple.

So now, some of the things I learned.

I think God doesn't have things perfectly laid out. Sometimes he has to roll with the punches. He couldn't force that couple to buy our house. He couldn't force the lender to let us have the loan. Those people have agency, and that's not something he's going to take away. I never felt like it was part of God's plan for those house sales to fall through. I do feel that we were guided to the place we live now, but I don't think he put us through all that specifically to get us here. What I do believe is that even though sometimes he doesn't have control over details like this, he doesn't abandon us spiritually. He is always there to give us spiritual guidance, and even if he can't take away or fix our problems, he's always willing to give us the strength we need to endure.

I realized that I've suffered from depression off and on for most of my life. I was finally able to recognize that what I dealt with in fourth and fifth grade was childhood depression. I don't blame anyone for not recognizing it for what it was. But I do feel grateful that I understand now, because I can look back on that time and feel love for myself instead of disgust. I also feel grateful for what I know because I think I'll be much better positioned to help my children if they also struggle with mental illness. I didn't understand what was going on, and I think my parents were baffled too. Probably therapy would have helped me immensely, but I think at the time it was something that people didn't understand as well as we do now. I can't change the past, but if it comes up with my kids, I hope that I'll be able to get them the help they need.

I had a good experience with fasting. I fasted for help to see the joy and the good in my life, and especially to find joy in my children. It was amazing what a difference it made. I was able to see through the fog and find joy in many simple but beautiful things. I felt the Holy Ghost calling my attention to those little happy moments--things like Ann Marie skipping joyfully on our walk home from school, or Ruby snuggling with me, or all of us sitting at the dinner table laughing at a joke.

I didn't realize until recently how exhausting mental illness is. I feel tired all the time even though I get 7-8 hours of sleep at night and take a nap every day, and I realized recently that it's because feeling sad, stressed, and discouraged most of the time and trying to still function normally takes a lot of energy. It's helped me to give myself some grace for not being able to do it all.

I've been incredibly grateful for Jesus Christ. I know that he experienced all of my sorrows, and knowing that I have someone who perfectly understands me is helpful. Because he did that, my struggling is sanctified and he knows how to help me. It's hard to remember that these things will help me become better in some way, but I do feel like I'm learning humility and empathy.

I don't think it will be like this forever. I have hope that we'll make it through this challenging time. I think it will take some experimentation and time. We'll see if completely weaning off my medicine will help, or maybe trying something new will do the trick.