The Anti-Bucket List

I think,” my husband said, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, “we are dealing with a very mentally ill person.”  Without thinking, I responded with “Yes, it seems that way.”  My automatic response surprised me, though.  A very mentally ill person?  Isn’t that me?

Loony tunes?  Wakko? Off my rocker?  Yep, you could say that’s me.  I have a mental illness.  Just admitting that in my head is really difficult and I never thought I would be able to share it with the whole wide world; there are just so many stigmas attached to the idea of what a “mental illness” is.  Knowing that I have a mental illness, do you picture me as some kind of salvatating, criss-crossed eyed person who lurches around making unintelligible sounds?  Do you expect me, a la Jerry Maguire, to “flip out” at any second?  In the picture to the right, who do you think is the “mentally ill” person?  I’m on the left, would you have picked me out in a crowd and said in a condescending whisper, “You know, the poor thing can’t help it, she has a mental illness”?

I don’t think any of those things apply to me, except, well, the lurching around making unintelligible sounds but that’s only before I’ve had my coffee in the morning!  Otherwise, I think that our culture has a pretty skewed view on what mental illness really looks like.  Psychotic behavior is often wrongly associated with mental illnesses.  Very few people are actually psychotic (think “Here’s Johnny” or “Fava beans and a nice Chianti (slurp, slurp)”).  Everyday mental illnesses come in many varieties.  There isn’t one singular face of mental illness as there are hundreds of different illnesses that can affect a person’s psyche- from anxiety to compulsions to depression and beyond.

The truth is that I have been dealing with depression on and off for over twenty years.  Sometimes I feel great and sometimes I just crash.  The reason I’m sharing this with you, my dear readers, is to raise awareness of mental illnesses; in my case, depression.  It is pretty likely that you or someone you know has struggled with depression at some point in their life.  Major depression is, in fact, the LEADING cause of disability in adults 15-44 and affects nearly 15 million people in the US each year.  Suicide, the worst possible outcome of depression, is the third leading cause of death in people ages 15-44.  On average, 94 people EVERY DAY commit suicide; that’s one life lost every 13 minutes EVERY DAY!  Sadly, many of those completed suicides could have been prevented.  One study found that 80% of people who seek treatment are successfully treated yet many, many people never seek out help before it’s too late.

I could have easily been one of those suicide statistics but I have somehow been spared from myself.  I always thought that I would get better, that this would just go away on its own.  Please let me tell you that isn’t true, you really do need to get help to get better.  Hauling yourself off to the doctors isn’t easy but, as cliché as it sounds, you DO have a lot to live for.  Sometimes, when you are sick, your thinking is so messed up that it doesn’t even seem worth it to stick around for your family.  A doctor can help point you in the right direction, whether it is medication, counseling, or something else.  When your thinking is clearer, you WILL be grateful that you worked through a horribly, blindingly painful time just so that you could sit next to your husband on the couch or take a walk in the park with your dog or buy your child’s favorite flavor of ice cream at the grocery store or any number of other small things that suddenly become incredibly meaningful when you’re alive to experience them.

My husband is lucky, he’s never experienced depression.  This makes it hard for him to understand what it’s like for me in my most difficult times.  I think that the best way to explain it is that when I’m really depressed, it feels like I am sinking down a funnel and my world keeps getting smaller and smaller.  Pretty soon, everything is dark and I am freefalling down the bottom of the funnel.  This raging wildfire in my head makes me physically exhausted.  I can’t get myself to exercise, keep the house clean, or do anything in general except sleep, A LOT.  At this point, the best thing someone could do for me is just to check in and talk with me.  Like I said, my world shrinks down to just a black void when I’m like this so a reminder that the whole world is still out there and waiting to receive me again is especially welcome.

In order to keep my world as open as possible, I am presenting myself with an anti-bucket list.  As in, this is a reminder to myself of all the things that I want to do in life so that I don’t prematurely decide to kick the bucket.  These are the things that I want to accomplish before I die of natural causes, when I’ve lived my whole life and I’m well over eighty years old.  I’ve written this as a fill-in the-blank so you can use it for yourself or someone you know.  Here goes:

1. Dream of a really far away place that you’d like to visit. For me, that would be the Himalayas.  That area seems so distant, both physically and in time.  I especially want to go on this trip from See the Wild:  Natural Jewels of Bhutan & Nepal.  Can you imagine seeing a wild leopard or a baby elephant in its natural surroundings?  For the low, low price of only $7,895 per person, you could go on this trip, too, or possibly you could take out a second mortgage on your home!  (For trip details, visit http://www.seethewild.org/natural-jewels-bhutan-nepal)
2. Think of a cuisine or particular dish you’ve never tried. For me, that would have to be eating real Italian food, like at a small neighborhood restaurant in southern Italy.  Being able to savor this food would be SO much better than the last time I ate at Olive Garden (which was several years ago now).  Our waiter brought us their processed imitation of tiramisu and said, “I think it’s done.  I stuck a fork in it and it wasn’t frozen.  Here. (Plunk).”  You see, I really NEED to go to the source to erase this memory!
3. Picture yourself doing something that really stretches what you think you’re capable of. Hands down, it would be a bicycling trip across the United Kingdom for me.  The National Cycling Route #7 is 446 miles long and stretches from north of Glasgow, Scotland to Wales, England.  Do I have any takers?
4. What would you do just for the thrill of it? I would love to go on one of those swamp boat tours in Louisiana.  I can secretly see myself as one of the characters from The Princess and the Frog movie; I especially adore Ray.  I think my mom would make a terrific Mama Odie and I’d love to be one of those pink spoonbill birds.  As an added bonus to a swamp boat tour, can you imagine all the good food you’d be able to eat when you got back on land?  I gay-ron-tee it would be a good time!
5. Pick out a habitat that you’ve never seen before- it could be mountains, rainforests, deserts, whatever. I’d really like to see the giant cacti in the Sonoran desert.  This desert is one the most ecologically diverse deserts in the world, more than 2,000 species of plants can be found in the 100,000 acres it covers.  I’d also love to see those really cute owls that live in cactus holes.
6. Before leaving this earth, you should probably be able to say that you’ve picked up a few skills in life. Do you have an out-of-the-ordinary one you’d like to learn?  I think learning how to play a banjo would be really neat.  Especially if I could visit the area my sister-in-law is from (Eastern Kentucky) and find someone who knows what they are doing to teach me.  I’d love to be a part of one of those front-porch musicians on a long summer’s night.  Do they even have those or is that just for TV?
7. And one last wish . . . Is there anything else you dream of that makes it life worth sticking around for?  I really want to be a gramma one day when my daughter is old enough and is ready.  Can you imagine my husband and I being together long enough to welcome a third generation into this world?  Thinking clearly now, I can’t believe I was ready to throw this away.  I also can’t fathom the fact that I was in so much pain, that I would cut myself off from meeting my sister’s new baby or future nieces and nephews from my brother.

These are only the big huge Fourth-of-July fireworks show moments that I’m hoping for. I have an even longer list of everyday stuff to look forward to:  dog kisses, redecorating my bedroom, starting a garden this spring, finishing a crocheted blanket for my niece, talking to my daughter about life in high school, exercising with my husband, figuring out how to make Indian food (see my previous post!), etc., etc., etc. I haven’t been to the zoo or the museum in a long time, it’s been several seasons since my husband and I went to a Bears game, and I still have to run my second marathon.  Plus, this dog is begging me to take her for a walk!  It’s pretty clear here that I’m just plain too busy and have too much to do to cut it all off! 

If you know someone who is struggling with depression, or even have a suspicion, please reach out to them.  The spring season sees the most suicides.  I think it’s just that winter is so long and so dark, people can’t hold on anymore.  Maybe after you or someone you know makes their own anti-bucket list, their thinking will clear up and they’ll have that little spark (that’s all it takes sometimes) to go on and live for another day.  That is my prayer for you AND I promise my next blog won’t be so serious!  Thank you for reading all the way through 🙂

PS- Some websites that can be helpful are:  www.save.org, www.afsp.org, www.familyaware.org, and www.nami.org.  There are also many Facebook groups available.  A national suicide hotline you can call in in emergency is 1-800-273-8255, this will get you to someone who can help at National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

PPS- I love this guy!  Thank you so much for standing by me this whole time!!