August 9, 2007. A date etched in my
memory. For all the best reasons. I’d been in a clinical depression for at
least two months. I’d been married three. I went into my second marriage clearly
too idealistic. And I hadn’t foreseen the difficulties that we would be presented
with. But, by August 9 I was ready for a revelation.
I can remember going into my
manager’s office after coming back from the session and being clearly shocked
by what I’d heard. But such a shock helped me turn a corner at just a time when
I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I only ever went to this employee
assistance program counsellor once. I can’t even recall his name. But his wise
brusqueness was what my soul quietly needed. Normally, I find it quite hard to
rationalise how someone so terse can think they’re loving.
But this counsellor listened to
what I had to say, and he told me I wasn’t depressed. I was grieving. I was
grieving the old life. I was grieving because I’d entered marriage, which is a
drastically new way of living for a single man. My career was at a crossroad. And
I was grieving in some part because I was getting to know who my wife really
was. She was stronger than I thought she was — which I have later come to learn
is such good news! But I struggled to
cope early on.
On one level I was annoyed because
he didn’t label me as I wished to be labelled. But at a deeper level, I craved
to be in recovery. I craved to be understood, but what I craved even more was
to be better.
I left that one-and-only session
with a spring in my step, cured of my need to remain depressed. It was as if
I’d been given license to live, for that
time, without the shackles of mental illness.
As history would have it, I’d
succumb to depression and anxiety again in 2011-2012, and again there were mini
bouts in 2015-2016. And again, I can see the grief in those times too. Grief
and depression can often be interchangeable, especially if we’re sensitive
around our circumstances, which most of us are.
Sometimes we’re taken through things that seem absurd, yet it’s
only at the end of it, with a reasonable mind, that we can see the benefit of
it for the pain we bear.
Sometimes, just
occasionally, you go to a counselling session ready to hear what you don’t
expect to hear, and you don’t even know it beforehand. Somehow, this was one of
those occasions for me.
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