Comfortably Numb

Depression is an illness millions of people suffer through for weeks, months, even years. It may be simple post-partum blues, or depression because of grief, or sometimes it is the bottom of the barrel and you cannot see your way out. It makes you feel lonely and afraid.

“Hello?
Is there anyone in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.”

What if you can’t nod from exhaustion? You try at first to take care of your depression as you retreat further and further from your family, your friends, the world. Then your family persuades you to go see a doctor, but you resist. You have had these feelings before and you have always pulled out of it by yourself.

But this time things are getting worse and the next thing you realize, all you want to do is pull out in front of a tractor trailer and end it all. This is when you know you are in deep shit. As soon as you drive the last mile to work, you call and make an emergency appointment with a medical professional.

“I’ll need some information first,
just the basic fact.
Can you show me where it hurts?”

You want to scream – IT HURTS EVERWHERE!!! I need help before something bad happens to me, or before I hurt myself. So off I go to the fix-me-up-place.

“Okay,
just a little pin prick …
you may feel a little sick.
Can you stand up?"

Group therapy, individual therapy, no notebooks with wire spirals – my favorite kind – how the hell will I be able to write. The first few days, I’m a zombie.

“I have become comfortably numb.”

This is not solving my problems; I want to be a normal wife again, a mother, a daughter, a writer, but never a nurse, never again.

“When I was a child,
I caught a fleeting glimpse
out of the corner of my eye …”

I am no longer a child and I have a dream. The pain is not over, it will always be there. I will sometimes have a few dark days looming, but now they are coming in longer waves. I close my eyes and reach into the recesses of my mind, pulling the willpower forward. I no longer want to be comfortably numb.

**”Comfortably Numb” copyright Pink Floyd