First Post in a New Blog

If you’re a first time visitor, I’m so pleased you dropped in and I hope you decide to hang with me by subscribing. If you are one of my faithful followers or visited me on The Constipated Woman, I welcome you to my newest blog. People are brought together through mysterious ways and it’s comforting to know by reading someone else’s words, no matter what the circumstance, you are not the only one…


“The World Health Organization estimates that depression will impose the second-biggest health burden globally by 2020. Think about that for a moment. Depression will impose a bigger burden than heart disease, arthritis and many forms of cancer on both individuals and society in less than a decade…It’s not a great stretch of the imagination to assume that in a few decades of unhappiness, depression and anxiety will have become the normal human condition, rather than happiness and contentment.” Mark Williams, PhD.

This was an interesting statement by Dr. Williams, especially the last sentence of the quote. It’s not a far reach to see that it can happen or possibly will happen the way our society is changing. Depression used to be an illness of the late middle-aged, now it strikes a substantial amount of people in their teens and younger. I’m not going to write about any more statistics, what I am going to write about is how it has taken forty-three years for a diagnosis of what the frick my problem is.

I consider myself a first-class make-up artist. In other words, I’m good at concealing any wounds, verbal or physical. Something like a wild animal would do to protect itself from predators. Our moods naturally wax and wane. It’s the way I think we’re meant to be. But repetitious thoughts and memories when triggered can leaving you hanging naked upside down, making others think, what the hell is wrong with her anyway? These self-attacking thoughts are incredibly powerful, and once they gather some momentum they are almost impossible to stop. One thought or feeling triggers the next, and then the next…and no matter how hard you try to break that runaway thought train, you can’t…then you’re out of control. I know.

The last post I made on my other blog, The Constipated Woman I tried to put my dark emotions into words. To most people, I didn’t make sense. Hell, I didn’t make sense to me and that’s when I sought help. I know myself and I knew something physically was going on with me other than the normal physical progression of aging. I’m talking about the tug-of-war going on in my head that was affecting the body; higher than high blood pressure, a TIA (mini stroke) that, fortunate for me manifested in the doctor’s office, memory loss and pains in the chest that mocked heart attacks and then to top it all, the doctor suggests I may have early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Holy Shit! I freaked, and went into a deeper depression. I sought out a different doctor, one with newer training and not stuck in the ways things were done a hundred years ago. During my first visit, he asked the right questions and pushed all the right buttons, and then, right there in front of this beautiful blue-eyed young man, I broke down like a two year old who lost her mommy.

He alleviated one of my burdens after a few tests by telling me Alzheimer’s was out the door only to be replaced what he thought was PTSD.
“PTSD? No, I don’t think so.” I wrote about one of my novel characters experiencing PTSD after coming home from Nam. When I hear the term, I think war related mental images. Period.
“I’m fairly certain,” he said. “You said you were gang raped...”
“I did?”
“You did, at your first visit…”
I didn’t remember telling him, but he said I did. I don’t remember even now telling him, and for God’s sake, why is all this shit coming out now? I don’t remember how I drove home without getting in a wreck that afternoon. My memories penetrated my thoughts with oozing black sludge and instead of focusing on finally having a diagnosis and getting past the past; all I thought about was finally facing my family. I would eventually have to admit it to my husband. I’m sure he suspected something through the years, like all the times he woke up in the middle of the night with me beating him with closed fists, the nightmares, or the intimate moments that were interrupted with fits of crying. Through the years things got better and I got stronger, but the triggers, whether they were emotional or physical were always teetering on the edge waiting for me to let my guard down and become one unguarded thought away from insanity. I felt like the little bird with a broken wing and the cat patiently hidden within the bushes waiting to devour it when it quit trying to fly away. I’m tired of putting on a happy face or being that cheery voice on the other end of the phone. So, I quit putting myself in those types of situations until I can do it freely.