Reflections on Young Life with Depression

I have always felt shame. Always. For taking up space. For successes, failures, ambition, lack of ambition, you get the picture.

Last month I was watching my once-a-year football game with my family when I saw my 12 year old niece texting with various friends and I teased her about her lack of focus on the game. Something occurred to me, however, as I watched her; I saw that she possesses a happiness and more importantly, a resiliency that I never possessed at her age or even sensed in myself until recently. Only in the past few years have I found or forged in myself the toughness that one needs to weather the joys and pain of life.

I usually date the onset of my depression from age 20 (going until about 34) with a pre-depressive episode in my junior year of high school. Watching my niece though, I wonder about the extreme sensitivity I had always felt. How easily I cried. How easily I felt shame. All hallmarks of depression.

Perhaps I am looking for an excuse for my lack of bravery and creativity, for my profound inability to get close to people in any healthy way when younger.  This could be. What I do know is that sense of wonder, excitement and joy that I see in my niece was rarely mine to have when I was her age.

So I'm letting my heart break a bit today for time and experiences lost but I'm also glad to feel a sense of understanding about why I was the way I was.