“With those six words, I felt she was giving me my life back.”
The bed was my world, the only place where I could slip into the fleeting death of sleep.
No, Mom, I said.
I dont think everyone is depressed.
I knew the man was happy.
They are depressed, Mom insisted.
They just hide it.
My mother, a high-strung Irish Bostonian, believed that life troubles should be endured without complaint.
As an adult, my mother reasoned it was nothing to dwell on.
With me, she was softer.
The taste of her love soothed me.
But even then, her impulse was to shoo feelings away.
Nothing was as bad as it seemed, now was it?
When tea time was over, one was meant to get on with ones life.
I dont want to believe that everyones depressed, I said.
Well, its true, she insisted.
But I shook my head.
Hope was an amulet that I gripped to stay alive.
My trouble started in college at the University of Vermont.
It came on me like a flu.
One minute, I was trudging to classes in the bright snow and conversing easily with friends.
The next minute, I was mute in bed in the fetal position.
My mother was so frightened that she called the dean of my college and demanded that he do something.
I was put into counseling.
The sorrow returned as a low-grade haze of numbness in my 20s.
My mother and I were sitting in a car watching a sunset over Lake Champlain.
I stared at the streaks of pink and gold as if they were trapped behind a pane of glass.
I think it must be beautiful, I said.
But I cant feel it.
She sipped her tea from a thermos.
you might choose to feel it, she said.
When I moved to Buffalo, it followed me.
You are so fat, you are hideous.
You wont be able to do it.
You will be publicly humiliated if you try.
Thoughts of death were constant.
I considered the options carefully, taking bleak comfort in the planning.
But what about my mother?
As an only child, I knew it was my duty to stay alive for her.
I was to be the emissary of happiness.
Maybe its our family, I said to my mom at last.
Maybe just everyonein our familyis depressed.
I had thought about this before.
Irish melancholy is romanticized, but in my family, it was a banal truth.
Drink was the main antidote.
Each of us sought a cure: drugs, work, food.
But not doctors or prescribed medications.
My mother finally conceded the thread of darkness in our family.
Because she knew the roads.
She knew the deadened agony of hanging the laundry when the black dog was at the door.
In the 1960s, she bought a red Karmann Ghia.
She used to drive too fast.
What was she leaving behind in the rearview mirror?
Was it her stepfather?
My parents disappointing marriage?
Her unrealized dreams of being a writer?
I was in a state of anguish, and I could see that she was afraid.
I stopped going to her for help.
I sought out a psychiatrist, medication and meditation in my 40s.
I was diagnosed as bipolar.
The medication has helped.
I went into recovery for an eating disorder that had plagued me since I was 14.
I never spoke of my diagnosis with my mother.
I was afraid of her reaction.
In the conversation, I imagined, shed shake her head and say, Dont be so dramatic.
My mental illness is a balancing act that requires constant maintenance.
But sometimes I get tired of being vigilant, get out of my routine, and slip back down.
For years, I kept a store of pills in my drawer just in case.
Once I had stopped treating her as my therapist, our relationship had improved.
I have one request, she said slowly.
I had no idea what was coming.
This was the first time we had spoken of such things in years.
I know how bad it gets, she said.
I want you to call me.
It is your life to do with as you choose.
We sipped our wine.
At that moment, I felt a flood of relief.
She was finally acknowledging that what I was going through what I had always gone through was real.
By making this request, my mother was putting a phone call between me and death.
With those six words I want you to call me I felt she was giving me my life back.
This conversation changed me, but it could not change the dynamic of my relationship with my mother completely.
I was still afraid to tell her about my diagnosis.
I mentioned it in passing one day, and it was met with silence.
My mother still believed in the power of will to chase away bad thoughts.
She came from a different generation where emotional struggles were to be borne alone.
I had watched her bear the abuse of her childhood in silence.
I had watched her muscle through her grief when my father left.
And when dementia slowly took her mind, I watched her rage, but never cry.
Her way was an idea of strength that would never seek help.
Her way was not my way.
But she broke the silence between us and spoke of the things we must never speak about.
And that saved me.
As I learned in my recovery, We are only as sick as our secrets.
My mother passed away three years ago.
I no longer have a promise to keep.
But in its place is a new promise to myself.
I cling ferociously to life and sound the alarm whenever that resolve weakens.
I learned how to sound the alarm on my own.
The ability to be ferocious is something I learned from my mother.
She has performed in such storytelling venues as Stripped Stories and Speak Easy.
She is working on a collection of essays entitled My Life in Cake.
She can be found athttps://julia-anne-miller.com.
If you or someone you know needs help, call or text 988 or chat988lifeline.orgfor mental health support.
Additionally, you’re able to find local mental health and crisis resources atdontcallthepolice.com.
Outside of the U.S., hey visit theInternational Association for Suicide Prevention.
This article originally appeared onHuffPost.
