My Firstborn Child: An Inspiration

Most people don't file depression under the ordinary difficulties of being alive, yet it shows up far more often than that assumption allows. A single traumatic event can bring it on. So can a tangle of other things: genetic predisposition, the death of someone you love, a marriage ending, money running short, a job lost. Any of these can be the thing that tips a person into it. We all move through good stretches and bad ones, and the bad ones leave marks in different shapes. Sometimes the sadness, the hopelessness, the anger or the restlessness grows loud and refuses to fade long after whatever caused it has gone quiet.

Nearly thirty years ago I said "I do." The ceremony was everything I had pictured. The church felt beautiful and set apart, and afterward we were carried into the reception on singing and dancing, surrounded by family and friends who loaded us with gifts. I would have told you then it was the happiest day I would ever have.

A few months before the wedding I took a vacation at the beach. It was hot and sticky, and my feet swelled with edema. This wasn't new to me; I had dealt with swelling before, so I thought nothing of it. What was strange came later. Back in the city, the swelling stayed. It didn't go down the way it always had.

Once the wedding was behind us, the swollen toes started to hurt. The ache kept at me until I gave in and went to see a doctor. My family physician sent me to a clinic near my office, mainly because by then walking any real distance was wrenching my knees. The doctor there ordered lab work and came back with the diagnosis: severe rheumatoid arthritis. All I knew about the illness was that it belonged to old people. I was young, newly married, full of plans to build a family with my husband. The news knocked the wind out of me.

At work, coworkers told me about grandparents who leaned on canes because their joints ached, and they felt for me, young as I was. The prescriptions didn't do much. Washing, cleaning, the walk into the office, each one meant pain I could barely stand. For a while I refused to accept what was happening. Then the depression arrived, hard, once I understood the disease was starting to take my body's cooperation away. Some days I was simply sad. Other days I was wretched. Mostly I was just not okay. What saved me was a stubborn pull toward getting better, and I pushed against the darkness every time I felt it creeping back in.

Within the first years of the marriage I became pregnant. My legs were betraying me by then, but I knew I was carrying something precious, and that was reason enough to keep going. The day I delivered, I was wheeled in for a C-section. When I came to on the ward, I watched the other new mothers get up and walk to hold their babies. A nurse told me mine was fine and would be brought to me soon.

Time kept passing and no one brought her. So I decided to go and get her myself. I was not supposed to leave the bed. I stood anyway, gripped the IV pole, and made my way toward the nursery on knees and feet that screamed with every step, nurses trailing behind me trying to steer me back. I kept walking. When they finally put her in my arms, something opened up in me that I still can't fully put into words. Holding her, I understood that nothing mattered more than this life I had been given to protect.

After that, being her mother carried me. Whenever the pain returned, or the depression tried to settle back in, I turned my attention to what had gone right instead and counted what I had. That is how I got through it. - Anonymous Contributor