She knew how to protect you on the bad days

She wished she could write like Hemingway or at least create an instant children’s literature classic on the back of a pub napkin like J.K. Rowling. Depression seemed like such a, yes, depressing topic. Who would want to read about that? Writing about her struggles with depression also felt like beating a dead horse instead of getting back on him after a fall. She was now in that oh so fun stage of recovering from her last bout of depression in which she said to yourself, “Oh, shit, what have I done? My entire life has fallen apart before my eyes and the worst part is that I couldn’t make myself give a rat’s ass at the time”. She supposed she should have written a Facebook status which read, “Virginia is depressed yet again, check back in 2 months.” Of course, that would have only been possible if she had not been in her inability to answer the phone, check her e-mail or go on-line phase at the time. She knew this all sounded like the biggest cop out and or load of bullshit in the world. She really did wish she were just lazy or making this all up, just your average, everyday drama queen. Unfortunately, she was not exaggerating and she knew what it is to be lying on the bathroom floor, the door locked, going through her list of reasons why killing herself is just not acceptable.

Reason # 1 My mother loves me and it would hurt her too much.

Reason #2 I know it feels sometimes like my sisters really wouldn’t miss me that much, but it would probably psychologically scar them and I love them.

Reason # 3 It would hurt my friends and extended family who love me.

Reason #4 Given the state of health care in modern America, if I failed, I would never be able to pay off the medical bills.

Reason #5 Somewhere deep down inside I really do believe that taking the life that God granted me would be a sin and would take my soul to a very dark place indeed.

It spoke volumes that her father did not appear on her list. 

Every psychologist she had ever been to, and there had been more than a few, attributed her depression to her father and the very broken, unhealthy way he was able to relate, if you can call it that, to her as a child. That, and the fact that she was like some sort of genetic dumping ground for her father’s old Southern, and yes that usually means cuckoo for cocoa puffs, family. Her ancestors were depressed before there was a name for it. They were a mix of the violent, depressed, paranoid Southern elite who started the Civil War or the War Between the States or the War of Northern Aggression and the violent, depressed, paranoid, poor Southern redneck farmers who actually had to wring the life out of the enemy somewhere in the mud.

Her grandmother, or Nan, as she told all of her grandchildren to call her, told her once as a child that her great grandmother, or Mama T, as she was universally referred to by her family,  would use the excuse that she couldn’t go outside while the sun was shining because it would ruin her treasured lily white complexion. She supposed that her great, great, grandmother had always retired to her room with the vapors for 2 months at a time when she was afflicted with the sickness. Virginia knew that a family with such a long history of mental illness could only have defied Darwin's law of survival of the fittest for so long because they had other people, namely African slaves and their descendants, doing their work for them generation after generation.

She remembered walking over to Mama T”s house from Nan’s on a warm summer morning because she longed to hear another of Mama T’s fascinating stories about the days before cars and airplanes. That morning Mama T  sent her away by yelling through the screen door of her back porch that she just couldn’t see anyone that day, that she was having one of her bad days. Virginia was so bewildered and saddened at that moment. She was barefoot as Nan would announce that she was too tenderfooted when her parents would bring her to Nan’s house in Virginia every summer. She always prescribed a summer of barefooted, outside adventures as the cure for whatever ailed her. It must have been near the beginning of summer because her  feet were still sore from walking over the small white stones, which made up Mama T’s gravel driveway. By the end of summer, her feet were toughened up and she could go where she pleased. It was already so hot and humid that walking outside felt like walking through pea soup and an ulterior motive for going to Mama T’s was that she would always slice her up some cold honey dew melon from her fridge. She remembered seeing Mama T’s shadow through the screen door and the pain, urgency and embarrassment in her voice as she had to plead with her great grandchild to leave her in peace that day. The innocent sting of rejection she felt as a child helps to remind her of how her depression makes her loved ones feel sometimes. The unanswered text message or call, having to leave a message yet again, the radio silence for months on end…

She wished she could explain to them what it felt like when the blackness descended upon her and how hard she tried to resist it, to release herself from its hold on her, its seducing oblivion, sometimes successfully, but more than she would like, not.

Nan always protected Mama T when the blackness descended. When Virginia arrived in her kitchen, dejected and pouty after her walk to Mama T’s that day, explaining that Mama T had sent her away, Nan took her in her arms and explained, “Lord, Ginny, Mama T’s just having one of her bad days. You and me are going to go over there tomorrow and get us some of that cold honey dew,”  Nan was the daughter of a poor, hillbilly tobacco farmer from the mountains of Virginia and Mama T was descended from old French Huguenaut Southern elites in Charleston, South Carolina, the Fayssouxs. Her great, great grandfather had been Dr. Peter Fayssoux, a physician and wealthy rice plantation owner, who had been the Surgeon General for South Carolina during the American Revolution. She had married well beneath her for love, running away with a dashing and much older railroad man in a fit of passion at the tender age of 15. Nan's family was even further beneath Mama T's origins; and Nan had been so surprised that Mama T accepted her so wholeheartedly into the family when she married Virginia’s grandfather, that she became fiercely loyal to her mother-in-law. They remained bonded and quite the informidable duo until Mama T’s death at age 94. The male members of the family didn’t stand a chance against their combined forces. You were almost always going to do as they wished, you just didn’t know it yet.

On a good day Mama T was confident and refined, with a high class Scarlett O’Hara type Southern accent in which she dropped all of her r’s. She had a biting, sarcasitic sense of humor, was highly intelligent, and had long since mastered the fine art of manipulation to get what she wanted. Nan, in contrast, was about as subtle as a blow to the head, possessed a profound kind of common sense, was physically strong, emotionally generous, determined, stubborn, and visceral. She spoke with a lower class heavily “r”ed mountain twang, and was never depressed a day in her life. She possessed the strength to turn Mama T’s ideas and desires into realities, and Mama T loved her for it. Nan protected Mama T from the outside world, just as she protected me and made me feel so very loved as a child. Nan knew how to protect you on the bad days.