I’m depressed. I’ve been trying to ignore it all week, but all the signs are there. I haven’t had the energy to do the things that I normally enjoy like going to the gym or reading. I haven’t wanted to watch my favorite TV shows. The things that I normally find joy in seem to have no appeal. I’ve been faking my way through my days, but I retreat to my bedroom halfway through the day absolutely exhausted and end up napping for a couple of hours just to survive the evening. I’m most content when I’m alone in my room, shut off from the world, avoiding my friends…avoiding my life.

It’s ironic really. I was speaking to a social work class on Monday about grief and loss and mentioned that I generally have a good sense of when I’m becoming depressed or manic. This time I don’t think I wanted to know. I wanted to, just this once, live in blissful ignorance. Things in my life were going so well. I’m invested in my work both at school and Heifer International. I have amazing friends who I love. I’m assistant coaching a basketball team at the local Boys and Girls Club and I can tell already that it is going to bring me great joy. I should be happy. All the ingredients are there. I should be happy. But I’m not.

I told the students in the grief and loss class that the hardest thing about bipolar disorder is that things can be doing amazing well and then BOOM out of nowhere, it all fails apart. I’m tired of it all falling apart. I’m tired of not being able to will myself to happiness. I’m tired of wishing there was something I could do to quash the depressive thoughts when they surge like a flood into my content mind. Helplessness is a pretty terrible feeling. I much prefer to be in control. (I’m sure a lot of us do.) It’s why I’ve never had any alcohol. It’s why I never did any illicit drugs. I always play it safe. Bipolar disorder doesn’t really care so much about that. Depression doesn’t care if things are going well in my life. Depression doesn’t care if I have people in my life that love me. Depression doesn’t care how much good I do for my community and how good that should feel. Nothing can absolve me from the onslaught of pain and hopelessness that has become a recurring theme in my life since the time I was 13 years old.

Today was the first time I’ve logged onto this blog in months so I just found a comment that someone left a while back. It was an insightful quote that I’m choosing to draw some strength from today:

“He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life” -Alexandre Dumas

Sometimes I think we only say things like that to make us feel better about going through the hard times. (I have to think that I’d be comfortable with extreme happiness all the time.)

The thought that keeps bouncing around my head now that I’ve emerged from the depths of this most recent depressive episode is: It’s easy to fall victim to the negative thoughts and the “THIS IS NEVER GOING TO END” mindset while you’re in it, but the beauty of coming out of a period of depression is something that a lot of people don’t get to experience and it’s pretty special. The sun shines a little brighter, the birds chirp a little louder and everything just seems better. That doesn’t mean that things are perfect or even good or easy, but it does mean that it’s manageable. After a month of barely being able to manage, I’ll take that.

More in the days to come…

I think this is the depressive corollary to the tree falling in the woods. I’ve been debating how and when I’d start writing here again and I’m not sure why I picked today (though it could have something to do with a thoroughly uneventful Saturday night). I haven’t even had any false starts because I haven’t let myself even think about writing. I was afraid of what I might say. (Note: Around word 1706, I realized that I hadn’t even gotten to the major revelation that I was thinking about disclosing. If you don’t make it to the big reveal, I don’t really blame you. Maybe I’ll do a shorter post on it some other time.)

It all started in the middle of November. Well actually let’s go further back than that. Why you ask? Simply because we can. It’s a Saturday night at 7:04 PM and I have no plans. This will not be a rushed post. You are in for a treat because I planned on going back to June, but realized that June couldn’t be fully explained without going back to March and March couldn’t be explained without August of 2008. If you’re beginning to think this paragraph sounds like “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie”, I wouldn’t fault you one bit.

Okay so the logical question here is “Marc, what pray tell happened in August of 2008?” The answer would be the following email exchange with my uncle:

Me (excerpt): I finished my summer program about a week ago…it really eased the transition for me from college because I had 50 Truman Scholars around at all times to hang out with plus all the people I know from my previous stays in DC. It was a summer of tremendous personal growth as I spent hours debating with my Truman friends and really had a chance to appreciate all that DC offers.

In other news, I’ve been working pretty hard to get into better shape and lost about 35 pounds or so this summer. I still have a ways to go, but I’m certainly in better health than I was three months ago. (Note: When I graduated from college, I was pushing a solid 280. I’m now around 215-220 and proud of that fact so I’m putting it out there.)

…

Now that I have a working list of schools I am interested in I’m getting ready to start working on applications. I also need to figure out what I am going to do now that I don’t really plan on getting a career-oriented job this year. It’s looking a lot like substitute teaching and traveling to visit schools and people across the country. I’m not used to a slowed down pace so we’ll see how it works out. I’m still running the Obama student blog and doing some nonprofit volunteer work. I guess I will have enough to keep me busy. (Living at home should be interesting when Dad isn’t out of the country.)

I guess that about does it for me. Look forward to hearing from you!

Uncle (excerpt):

I’m very happy for you that you’ve had a productive (and hopefully, fun) summer.

…

But on a more serious level, I’m wondering if this year would be a good time to work on your health, as that can be a full time job.  I think if you have health insurance, you might try an eating disorders program, of which there are several in the DC-Baltimore area.  I hope this suggestion doesn’t come out of left field.  I’m sure you’re more than aware that your weight problem is really an eating-disorder problem; this kind of problem usually calls for a multi-disciplined approach, etc.  That’s why I think this year is perfect for you to take charge of it.

Marc, I hope you won’t think that I’m being either judgmental or inappropriate.  I’m not scolding you.  I’m just laying out my medical opinion.  And if your loving uncle won’t step up to the plate for you, who will.  I hope someday you’ll let me know if you think I have a problem (and I’ve got plenty).

Don’t feel compelled to even answer this message.  I won’t bring it up again.  But you might take a while and think about it.  I think that the whole eating problem (the severely limited choices and the bingeing) is starting to get in the way of your happiness and that this may be the ideal time to take the bull by the horns, to apply a tired cliche’.

Oh, well,   I’ve said my piece.  You probably know by now that I love you and care very much about your well-being.

A few things to know about this exchange: 1) I love my uncle. Not in a feel obligated to because he is family sort of way, but because he’s a really great guy and I cherish his friendship. Considering how my extended family amounts to all of six people, it’s nice to have at least one I click with. 2) To the “I hope this isn’t coming out of left field” statement. Did I know I had/have an eating problem? Yes. Would I have in a million years considered it an eating disorder? Not so much. Why? Because I was ignorant and thought those only happened to women and were limited to anorexia and bulimia. So while I was already in the ballpark, I must have been in the nosebleed seats because the comment still caught me off guard. On top of that, I remember finding the timing a little odd, since I had dropped 35 lbs in three months and was feeling pretty damn good about it.

Okay that was August of 2008. I started seeing a nutritionist and a therapist at Sheppard Pratt’s Center for Eating Disorders in March of 2009. I’m not sure why it took so long for it to really sink in with me or why I waited until I was working a full-time job to start treatment, but hey, I’m a puzzle. (Note: It’s kind of hard pulling off being this open about the most difficult aspects of my life and still be a puzzle. But hey, that’s what makes this fun.) I picked Sheppard Pratt because that’s where I did my inpatient and outpatient treatment after my psychotic break and they handled that pretty well. I’m a loyal customer, I suppose.  (Note: Sheppard Pratt and Under Armour are the two brands that I’ve completely bought into. If it weren’t for the fact that I had to go straight to work after, I probably would have been wearing Under Armour. I’m telling you: brand loyalty.) I started seeing a nutritionist and a therapist there once a week. The goal with the therapist was to work on issues of body image (mainly that my self-confidence is way too tied into my comfort level with my weight) and psychological triggers of bingeing. The goal with the nutritionist was to get me to eat more than the five or so meals that I’d been eating on steady repeat since I was six or so.

I clicked with the therapist right away, which was wonderful. My sessions with my old therapist had grown stale. I’d been seeing her on and off since high school and had completely run out of things to say. (Note: Also she started treating my mom, which I said okay to then, but it started to bother me more and more over time.) For the first time in a long time, I looked forward to going to sessions. I’d go in thinking, “I really want to talk about X, Y and Z” and she’d somehow get me talking about Q, which I hadn’t even realized was bothering me. We talked about how much it got to me when people commented on my limited eating habits. We discussed how I hated it when my co-workers would try and be accommodating to the point of absolutely embarrassing me, when I had never complained once about going to a restaurant where I wouldn’t like anything. We talked about how in college I could polish off a box of Wheat Thins or a large pizza by myself in one sitting and not think twice about it. Well until I looked in the mirror or at a photograph…then I thought 300 times about it. We talked about that too. I learned a lot about my closet eating habits, developed during a childhood of feeling guilty for not eating what the family was eating and an adolescence of bringing home fast food and eating it in my room. And countless other things. (Note: I’ll try to remember to write posts on this later, but I always say that and never do, so who knows. I think it’s important to realize that men struggle with body image too. Well I can’t speak for all men, but some of us do anyway.)

Things with the nutritionist did not go quite as well. I went, begrudgingly, and turned in food logs that embarrassed the hell out of me because it was the same three meals over and over again. Sometimes even two meals in the same day had a striking similarity. Like on days where I would have yogurt for breakfast and yogurt for dinner. (Note: Giant Foods brand low-fat vanilla yogurt. If I was living within driving distance of a Giant, that’s the yogurt I’ve had since I was in 1st grade. For those of you keeping score, that’s three brands now.) Finally, my therapist stepped in and said something to the effect of: “Okay you obviously don’t have any strong desire to change the way you eat. Why don’t we put an end to making you feel as though there is something wrong with you because of your diet? The sooner you stop caring about what other people think about what you eat, the better off we are going to be. This is just making it worse. Marc, look at me, there is nothing wrong with you. Okay? There is nothing wrong with you. Say it out loud. ‘There is nothing wrong with me.’” That was a watershed moment. I’m getting a little teary-eyed writing about it actually. It was that big a deal. If I hadn’t already trusted her completely, that would have done the trick. From then on, I had no doubt she had my best interests at heart, even if I didn’t always want to hear what she had to say. (Note: For the record, I did not expect this to become a full disclosure of my eating disorder treatment post, but what the hell, I’m on a roll. Also in case anyone is wondering why I keep interjecting in my own writing with random notes. I usually do this if I want to write sarcastic comments in an email I’m writing. It might also have something to do with the fact that I’ve been plowing through Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball which features notes. I’m starting to think the way he writes. It’s a little scary.)

Okay time to fast-forward, but first this summary:

At first I’m seeing the therapist every week and she says no reason to change that because we have a lot of work to do. No joke, two weeks later we decide it’s fine if I come once every two weeks. Do that for a while, then it’s once every three weeks. Eventually it’s whenever the hell I feel like it. Nice to have that freedom. It was also nice to find a therapist that a) was not an expert on bipolar disorder because she asked questions that I never got from people who knew it inside and out and forced me to think about myself in new and different ways and b) became my biggest fan because she would say, “You should try doing this.” I would try doing it. It would work. I’d come back, say it worked and she was fascinated by how open I was to growing and changing. When your therapist is saying things like “I wish my other patients could meet you.” you feel pretty damn good. At least I did. Over the course of the next few months, I grew a lot as a person. I mean really. I felt more comfortable in my own skin. The little things weren’t fazing me as much. I literally reached a point where I was completely at peace with every crappy thing that had happened in the past because they had brought me to where I was. It was wonderful. Then came June.

Things were going so well that I decided it was as good a time as any to talk to my doctor about lowering the dosage of my antidepressant. See I know that I’ll be on a mood stabilizer forever and ever, but the antidepressant is more of an aid than anything else. I said something like, “Yo, Dr. Temple. I’ve been trending manic for a while and I was wondering if we could drop my antidepressant from 450 mg to 300 mg.” I expected some resistance, a little back and forth. I was bracing for it. What I got was: “Sure, that sounds fine. We can re-evaluate it the next time I see you.” Fast-forward 90 days which brings us through the end of June, all of July and lands us in August. Things are still going well, I haven’t been quite as hypomanic. I start debating, with myself, as to whether or not this is my opportunity to get weaned off the anti-depressant and see how it feels to experience the world without an artificial lift. I go in for my 90 day check-in, which goes something like this, “What up DT?” (Note: I don’t actually call my doctor DT, but I’ve started to use random 90s catchphrases at work and it’s starting to affect how I write. Sorry.) Doctor makes small talk about my job and politics and starts writing out my prescriptions. I stop him and say, “Look, I was wondering if I could come down another 150 mg and see how I do?”  See, I thought I would lull him into lowering my dose again and then in 90 days, I’d say BAM let’s take me off it completely and then we’d have it out. What actually transpired was he said, “Well, why don’t we try weaning you off it entirely and see how you do. There are some bipolar patients who’ve demonstrated that they are just fine on only a mood stabilizer and often do better. If you’ve been trending toward the high side so long, it might make sense to try this.” I sit there, mouth agape, and am torn between being giddy that he beat me to the punch of taking me off my anti-depressant and being mildly upset that he hadn’t mentioned this sooner. So I figure we’ll be doing a weaning in the same 90 day set-up as before, so a 6-month weaning. (Note: Is “doing a weaning” even a phrase? Because if it isn’t it should be.) Then my doctor pulls something I was not quite ready for as he unveils the plan: After 30 days drop to 150, after another 30 days go 150 every other day after another 30 days, come off it completely and then we will see where we are. I have a bit of a “Realllllllyyyyyy?” moment. (Note: This is actually a “Are you fucking kidding me?” moment, but I want to keep the blog kid-friendly.) I get over it and start the weaning.

Fast forward…I’m loving my job. I take the GRE and it goes fine. Life is going swimmingly. I’m going to the gym 4 to 5 times a week. I’m in the best physical shape of my life. Seeing my therapist less frequently, but still getting a lot out of going. Then November comes, at this point I’d been off the medicine for a little while and I have this sense of clarity. Everything is a little bit crisper. I react to things with a little bit more emotion. Things hit me harder. My reactions feel more real. It’s a hard sensation to describe. Also during this time, work kicks into overdrive as our 5 person staff (plus 2 out of this world interns) pulls together our national conference for 300 people. Some organizations have conference planning teams…we have the same 5 people who are always at the office and we still have 27 other things going on. I start staying at work until 8 or 9 at night. My gym schedule gets totally thrown. I lose any semblance of a life. Still, I’m completely in love with my job (late July – middle of November). Mental health is pretty decent. I’m golden. The conference happens and it goes by like a complete blur, still it was amazing to have it all come together and play a big part in making it happen. So much is going on that I don’t even notice that I’m not quite as pumped by the success as I’d expect to be. I chalk it up to being tired.

(Note: For the record, if there is a record, this is where I was planning on starting the story/post. It’s two hours later and we are already in the 3400s in terms of word count. Well played. Good thing I have no place to be on a Saturday night.)

The day after the last day of the conference, I have a therapy appointment scheduled. I go. I’m feeling mildly depressed and I tell her that. I then attribute it to the fact that I can become so tunnel visioned with something, be it work or school that I’m completely distracted from my mental health. This can sometimes be a good thing, if I really need to escape for a while. However, in this case I was so wrapped up in this event and then it ended and I didn’t really have the same sense of purpose. We talked it over, decided it was natural to feel that way. Maybe, I was feeling it a bit more than someone without the same mental health struggles, but a totally natural reaction nonetheless. Made sense to me, made sense to her. Perfect. Only it didn’t get better. And worse I didn’t really notice. I have four or five work days until I leave for my first vacation since I started at Active Minds in January, an extended Thanksgiving trip to visit, ironically, my uncle in Key West. Looking back it’s odd that I wasn’t the slightest bit excited about going. I had a mild anxiety attack while packing because I hadn’t thought about the trip during all the conference madness and I felt unprepared. FOR A VACATION. Anyway, anxiety happens so I write it off. I head to Key West. One of my oldest friends meets me there from Seattle where he works now. I have every reason to anticipate an amazing time: One of my favorite family members; a friend I haven’t seen in a while; and it’s FUCKING KEY WEST. Nope can’t get excited.

My bag gets lost on the way there so I’m frustrated. I realize that I need to turn in a graduate school proposal to the Truman Foundation if I’m going to use my scholarship money next year (which I might) so I spend a good chunk of the first couple of days either a) worrying about the proposal or b) working on the proposal. At this point, I’m pretty depressed, but don’t realize it. One of the worst possible things you can do while feeling depressed is try and examine your life and your future and figure out what exactly it is that you are hoping to do with your life, which is exactly what the proposal asked for. I have a mild crisis, which I feel a little bad for having put my friend through, but he wouldn’t really complain if his hair were on fire, so he was pretty perfect to have around. His low-key nature was contagious so even if I wasn’t enjoying myself, I was in a mental place of not caring much and relaxing. It was nice. Then the last day of this little vay-kay comes and I start to think about what is waiting for me back in DC: work and graduate school applications and the anxiety starts right back up again. It’s not as though the world stopped moving, I just stepped away from it for 5 days. Didn’t quite think that one through. So I had managed to pause the depressive slide while I was on vacation, but as my plane was descending into Maryland, my mood was descending too. I touched down in Maryland and it’s safe to say we had reached a crisis point. (Note: Sometimes I use the pronoun “we” when I really mean “I” or “me”, I’m not sure if it’s because I want you to feel as though you’re a full-fledged part of this shitshow or if I just sometimes use the pronoun we.)

I go into work the next day after getting in reallllllly late because I book the cheapest ticket possible so that involves things like going from Florida to Newark to get to Maryland and there is bad weather and all the other things that result in getting in at midnight and in bed at 1, when you have to be up in about 5 hours. (Note: Like the “we” principle, I said “you” here, but obviously I was talking about myself. Again, I’m a puzzle….but we already know that.) One of the nice things about not getting enough sleep when you are depressed and haven’t fully admitted to yourself that you are depressed is that when you aren’t as productive at work as you usually are, you can tell yourself it’s because you’re tired! Score! Only I start getting slightly more rest and it doesn’t make a difference, things just get worse. I’m in a downward spiral with nothing to grab onto during the free-fall. I tell my co-workers that I’m feeling pretty depressed, but I fully expect it to pass and I could use their support and understanding as I to weather the storm. The only co-worker I’ve known since I started, tells me that she wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t said anything (Note: Looking back this is one of the scariest moments of the whole experience. I’m rapidly descending into a severe depressive state and I can fake it well-enough to know that I’m not well, not fully admit to myself how dangerous my mind state is and have people around me not notice the difference. And I work at a mental health awareness organization. Go figure. That being said, it’s not anyone else’s responsibility to mind my mental health so it’s not the kind of thing I’d get upset with someone over. Still, scary stuff.) For the next week or two, I’m just going through the motions. It takes literally all of my energy to get to and from work, not to mention just sitting there and staring at the computer screen. I grew more and more frustrated with my slowed brain function and in turn that contributed to me feeling worthless. Depression is a trip isn’t it?  I pull myself together for the moments that I need to, for instance I go to meet with one our high school chapters in VA, tie myself together with a smile and fake my way through a club meeting. But my mood is up and down and the ups keep getting lower and lower and the downs are beyond painful. I miss a couple days of work because I’m worried that I won’t be able to concentrate on the road when I’m driving to work (and in the back of my mind I know that there is a better than even chance I’m going to want to drive off a bridge. More on that in a minute.). It just keeps getting worse and worse and I still manage to convince myself that I don’t need to call my doctor or my therapist, that “I’m handling it.” I’ve weathered depression before. It will pass. I’ll get over it. Part of me thinks that I held onto that hope that it would start getting better because I was terrified let myself think that it might not.

You see, at this point, I had started experiencing some pretty severe suicidal ideation, worse than at any other time since my first severe depressive episode in high school. I was scared that if I let go of that little bit of hope that I was clinging to, that would be it, I’d snap. It wouldn’t matter that I called my doctor or my therapist. Also, I had kind of conditioned myself to think “If I am a danger to myself, if I’m actually suicidal, I’ll call. Otherwise it’s on me.” (Note: My doctor later described me as being a victim of managed care with my adopting the insurance company mentality of when they would want me to go get help.) As the depression got worse and my mood darkened to the point that I could barely see the light of day, I found myself wishing that I were suicidal so that it would be a cut and dry issue. I was waiting to be taken care of. I wanted someone else to take over. I could not handle it by myself any longer. But I wasn’t completely gone yet, so I felt guilty scaring people by telling them how bad it was…so I didn’t. And here is the revelation that I was planning to make because I need it to be out there and I haven’t had the courage to say this to anyone. I was suicidal. I was. I didn’t have a plan, yet. But I wanted it over. I wanted to cash out. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what kept me hanging on, but I remember vividly having to force myself to think of reasons to live. I started writing suicide notes in my head as a way to escape from the pain of living. I started to think of ways it could happen, ways I could die. I didn’t sit there and plan it all out, but I was on that path. For the first time in my life, I truly wanted to kill myself. The worst thing about it all was that I couldn’t convince myself that there was anybody I could talk to. I wanted to reach out to my friends, but I don’t have a close circle of friends in DC and it’s a little hard to call someone you trust a ton, but haven’t seen in a while and say “I’m thinking about killing myself.” Even in my darkest hour, I didn’t want to do that to my friends. I couldn’t even bring myself to call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which I mention whenever I blog about depression  or suicide or do anything for work (Note: The number is 1-800-273-TALK, if you get to the point I got to and can’t get out of your own way. Remember that I said this “PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE.” I’m serious. I know that my own voice wasn’t going to tell me to do it, so if you can’t get the thoughts out of your head and you need a voice to break through, feel free to envision me screaming “PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE” at you repeatedly. Or if it helps you more imagine someone really intimidating, let’s say Mike Tyson…no his voice wouldn’t work. Let’s go with Mr. T. You can start getting this image ready now in case you ever need it. Mr. T, gold chains, circa Rocky III, so in his Clubber Lang persona, which really isn’t too much different than any other persona he has…okay he only has one persona. Okay so you have the image of Mr. T, you have his growling voice ready and then he says “PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE.” Save that for when you need it. I’m pretty sure I will.)

The entire reason for this post was to admit to someone (in this case whatever random person makes it through this treatise) that things really got that bad. Obviously, I did not kill myself. I kept a therapy appointment I had, my therapist listened to me, recognized that I was in crisis, forced me during our session to call my doctor and schedule an appointment for that day (we also discussed an inpatient admittance which I was more open to than I imagined that I would be, but decided this course of action was preferred). Met with my doctor, he put me back on my antidepressant, told me to start seeing my therapist once a week again, reminded me that coming out a depression sucks and takes a while so not to get too frustrated with myself or the process. So I’m back on the same dosage of the medicine that I was on back in June, I’m back to seeing my therapist regularly, but truth be told I’ve finally come out of it. I’m back to where I want to be and other than wanting to forget that December ’09 and part of November ever happened, I’m really okay.

I have a lot more to say about the recovery aspect of this, but I’ve been writing for three hours now and I don’t know what would possess anyone to read this whole thing as it stands now. So I’m going to sign off here. Except to say this, and this refers back to the title, when I talk to my friends on the phone and they ask me how I’ve been and I tell them the cliff notes version of this, leaving out the worst parts and basically just saying that I went through a severe depressive episode, they all react the same way, which is “I’m so sorry that happened and I wish I had known!” That says something that I dropped off the face of the earth for a month and a half, didn’t talk with anyone much outside of work and no one really thought to themselves, “Hmmm…maybe I should call Marc, I haven’t heard from him in a while.” The point being if you have a friend you know struggles with a mental health disorder or even if you have a friend who normally calls you on a regular basis and then doesn’t for a while. Reach out. Please. I’ve given a lot of thought to my friends who now say, “Is there anything I can do?”. Really all you can do is be there and listen and know that going through something like this is a bit like hell. I don’t like to admit to myself that during that time there was no one around that I felt comfortable calling and a) confiding in or b) asking them to hang out and just sit there and do nothing so I wouldn’t feel so alone and disconnected from the world.

Okay signing off for real now. Thanks for reading.

Just wanted to let you know that I will be taking a more active role in blogging for BringChange2Mind and as a  result will not be posting frequently here.

Check out the BringChange2Mind blog at www.bringchange2mind.wordpress.com

Happy holidays,

Marc

PS. You can also visit my Facebook fan page at www.marcrpeters.com and see all my blog posts there.

by Kate Otto

Man, am I missing the equator right now!  As the temperature continues to plunge here in America’s northeast – I’ve been working from chilly Cumberland, blustery Boston, nippy New York City, and arctic Albany  – the need to stay warm is increasingly evident.  But while I am on the search for super-insulated socks and gloves,  there is another way I know we can keep ourselves from freezing over.  And this way requires far less chaos than mall shopping.

My family and I have been supporting WISER, a remarkably successful all-girls secondary school in Muhuru Bay, Kenya, for the past two years.  I had the chance to visit WISER’s school grounds this past March – I wrote about my adventure here, and posted some colorful photos here – and I was blown away by the positive energy emanating out of such a materially poor area.

For WISER girls, the enormous yet simple gift of an education has been transformative: emotional burdens find a safe resting place,  financial security becomes a graspable reality, intellectual curiosity is encouraged, and they become the leaders of Muhuru Bay, women who will go on to work in the public, private, and non-profit sectors to ensure that their children never have to endure the poverty in which they were raised.

Supporting WISER has been incredibly fulfilling for us because our support has translated directly into results:

• 55 girls are now passing national exams in Muhuru Bay, compared to 6 before WISER– a 900% increase!

• By building a source of potable drinking water for the girls, WISER has improved the entire community: no more cholera outbreaks!

• Girls who used to be seen only as future wives are now seen as future leaders, and parents prepare them for high school as early as 4th grade, telling them, “You will go to WISER!”

Not only fulfilling.  Heartwarming, in the truest sense.  We delight in giving to this small, grassroots organization that has piloted a brilliant program, proven their results to be effective, and continued to scale up their work to reach more young women.  We feel purposeful, and proud to be part of the positive transformation.

The Otto Family will fundraise $1,000 this year to support WISER before the end of 2010.  I am asking you to help us reach our goal by giving $5, $10, or any amount that you can this holiday season.

• To donate quickly online, please follow the instructions on my secure Donation Page. This will allow you to donate through my personal PayPal account – you will need a (free) PayPal account in order to donate.  I will send one lump sum donation to WISER on January 1, 2011.  
• To donate by check, please make your check payable to “Duke-WISER” and send it to me at: Kate Otto  219 Pine Swamp Road  Cumberland, RI 02864

And if donating alone does not keep you sufficiently toasty, I promise all donors a very warm embrace the next time we meet.  Thank you and wishing you a very blessed holiday season.

 

“Hopefully, in my lifetime, I will witness the day when being completely open about my mental illness will not be viewed as a matter of courage, but a matter of fact.” –  Karen Jolley

One of those statements that I wish I had said first

-Marc

An Urgent Message from CABF Executive Director

,
I am writing with an urgent request for you to spend 2 minutes each day this month to support CABF, and it will not require you to open your pursestrings. We know we have enough people in our community to generate enough votes to win a $250,000 grant from Pepsi. But, we can see from the number of people who click on the links that only about 10% of you are voting. If you click on the links below and vote, we can move up very quickly!

CABF eliminated its membership fee in February to provide information and support free of charge. Consequently, our donations are down dramatically. I know times are hard! I’m not asking you to donate, I’m just asking you to vote so that we can sustain CABF! We must find the strength within our CABF community to VOTE and keep CABF a part of so many parents’ lives.

If CABF has ever helped you, please take two minutes to vote every day, ALL 3 WAYS, until November 30th.

	Vote Online: Go to http://www.refresheverything.com/CABFhelpsmorekids.
	Double Our Votes– Vote on Facebook: http://tiny.cc/cabfhelpsmorekids. If you do not see our project, or receive an error message, please click again. Facebook sometimes gives an error message, but, it does work; and  we need all 3 of your votes.
	Triple Our Votes — Text your Vote: Text 104174 to PEPSI (73774) (Normal text rates apply).

Sign up for voting reminders at http://www.bpkids.org/pepsi. We promise not to spam you after the project is over.
Warmly,

Susan Resko
Executive Director

‎”Professional psychiatrists in China are like pandas. There are only a few thousand of us.” -ZHANG YALIN, assistant director of the mental health research institute at Central South University’s medical school

“Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Last week I had the rare pleasure of speaking with a group of high school freshmen. I (along with a few of my classmates) was tasked with sharing about my personal service experience. I was instructed to talk about what service means to me and what I’ve gained from it in my life. The goal of which was to inspire these students, to help them find their own way of serving, and to show them that anyone can do it.

At first I struggled. We were rotating from table to table talking with five or six students at a time. I was nervous because I  was still emerging from a fog of depression. When I feel depressed, I am disconnected from the world. I put distance between myself and my closest friends. Talking to strangers, which normally comes natural to me, is frightening when I feel that low. It definitely took me a couple of tables to get geared up, but eventually instinct took over. By the end this is what I was saying after making a few jokes and introducing myself:

“…Why do I serve? Well, I’ve faced considerable adversity in my life. When I was only two years older than you, I was getting ready to serve as student body president of my high school. I was getting ready to intern at USA Today. I was getting ready for my heavy course load of Advanced Placement classes. Except I really wasn’t getting ready for any of those things. I wasn’t getting ready at all. I wasn’t even getting out of bed. I was suffering from a severe depression. I feel not only a desire to serve, but also an obligation. I would not be where I am today if people had not looked after me. If my teachers hadn’t gone above and beyond to protect me and to nurse me back to full health before sending me off to college, I might not be here at all. Their only motivation was love. When I faced similar troubles in college, my professors carried me until I could walk on my own.

Every day I wake up hoping to serve one person, to make one person think something new, to inspire one person to do something different. It’s then and only then that I feel as though I’ve lived up to what I was called to do. It’s then and only then that I feel as though I’ve made a deposit on paying down my debt of gratitude.

Now, there are different ways to serve, but you can start in your everyday life. High school is hard. You will be worried about being teased, getting good grades, and making friends. You will be stressed out and at times it will seem overwhelming. But you can choose how you react. You can close yourself off to the world. You can walk around upset and pass that around like a virus, infecting everyone you come in contact with. OR you can be positive. Smile at people. Live your life in a way that will inspire those around you to want to do better and more than they think is possible. Do that and you will have already begun to serve.”

As always, thanks for reading!

-Marc

It’s not like when I feel like I’m getting depressed I can just go visit the doctor and get treated. I think that feeling of helplessness may be worst of all. Often times I spot a depression coming down the tracks and I’m completely paralyzed. I can’t move out of the way. I just have to brace for it and hope that this wreck won’t be fatal.  According to the American Federation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), “Studies of bipolar patients indicate that 25 percent to 50 percent of persons with this illness make at least one suicide attempt.” That hasn’t been me, yet. That doesn’t mean it won’t be next time and that is scary as hell.

Sometimes I wonder if people who attempt suicide have just grown tired and do not want to deal with life anymore. Managing a mental health disorder is exhausting and there are times when I just want to press pause and get a break from constantly checking on myself to see where my mood lies. It’s exhausting to have to explain to every new person in your life what the disorder is and what it means for friendships, for relationships. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I say because each person’s reaction is going to be beyond my control.

Twice just this past week I’ve had to explain away manic behavior. In one case, a professor was reading me the riot act for acting out the previous week in class and kept saying how she expected better from me and how it was so unlike me. It was so unlike me because I wasn’t fully present when it happened. Looking back I can remember my actions and remember wanting to shut up, but couldn’t bring myself to make the rational decision to do so. That lack of control is scary.

I’m always tremendously careful to avoid leaning on bipolar disorder as an excuse for anything but sometimes I think it’s important to give people context and explanation. So I patiently tried to explain what a manic episode was and how it affects my behavior and to her credit she got it, but it took my explaining that to come out of the episode I had to take an anti-psychotic drug for her to realize that it was something fairly serious. If I had asthma and had an attack in class that became a distraction or I had to leave because of it, would that require any explanation at all? Of course not. It’s SO FRUSTRATING that most everyone walks around with such a rudimentary knowledge of mental health disorders that their knowledge of physical health seems like that of a medical scholar in comparison.

I cannot control what people know nor can I control how they react to my disclosure. Even if they profess to be sympathetic and express a desire to be supportive, I cannot control whether they will actually deliver. It’s easy to say you are willing to be there for someone when you have no earthly clue what is involved and haven’t had to do any actual work yet. It’s different to actually be there when half the time I don’t even know what to ask for. There is nothing more frustrating than to be in the middle of  bout of depression and be asked “what can I do to help?”. There’s not really anything you can do to help. You can sit there and keep me company. You can try and distract me and make me laugh. That’s really the extend of what’s within your control. Being asked what someone can do to help just makes me more depressed because I don’t ever know what to ask for and I want to have the ability to put those needs into words.

One more beyond my control and then I’ll sign off. Friday night I was really depressed. I was in so much emotional pain that I physically hurt. Normally in that situation, I would try and force myself to call someone and ask if we could just hang out because it’s the worst possible time to be alone. However, last night one of my good friends here wasn’t answering and another was at work and the rest of my classmates were at an official school Halloween party. I had such a strong desire to call one of them and ask them not to go because I needed someone around that badly, but I really hate being a burden on people and it’s against my nature to make that kind of request. So I just chatted with friends from college online and they made me laugh and they kept me company. It’s not the same, but people’s availability is beyond my control.

Thanks for reading,

Marc