Making Friends With Depression

A story about remembering who I am.

I suppose the best place to start any story is at the beginning.

For me, that beginning is fourth grade.

There’s plenty of research showing that head trauma can contribute to mental illness. In my case, it happened in the parking lot of a meatpacking plant when I was ten years old and very convinced I was about to become the next great BMX superstar.

I borrowed a friend’s bike. I wore no helmet. I rode it off a loading dock.

If you’re wondering if you read that correctly - you did.

I didn’t pull up on the handlebars hard enough and…

…I woke up in the hospital.

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Whatever short-term memory I had, and much of my long-term memory, was wiped clean like a computer hard drive. When I finally got home, my mother told me she would sometimes find me standing in the bathroom, staring into the mirror, trying to remember who I was.

I was a stranger to myself.

That feeling, of being unfamiliar in my own skin, followed me for most of my life. I struggled to feel comfortable with myself and, because of that, struggled to feel comfortable with other people.

The accident happened when I was ten. The following year my father moved out and my mother’s new boyfriend moved in. The year after that, I tried to hang myself, began smoking pot, and spent most of the summer blackout drunk.

It was a quick progression into madness.

Not long after that summer, I found myself in my first psychiatric hospital. There would be more. By the time I was seventeen, I had been hospitalized three times, diagnosed with major depression and schizoaffective disorder, and struggled to finish high school.

When I wasn’t in the hospital, I worked at a Dollar Tree and kept using.

I had no direction.

All around me, people were moving on with their lives. College, careers, relationships. And there I was, drinking forties and smoking joints on the drive home from work.

Thank God my life changed.

Today, my life is the best it has ever been.

Hello. I’m Charles. I was diagnosed with major depression and schizoaffective disorder, and today they no longer define my life.

Healing didn’t begin when I tried to get rid of my depression.

It began when I stopped fighting it.

This book, ‘Making Friends With Depression,’ is the story of how that happened.

If you’re someone who struggles with your mind, your past, or your sense of self, I hope you’ll walk with me for a bit. There’s another way to relate to what hurts, and it’s gentler than you’ve been taught to believe.

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Editor’s note:

I’ve been quietly working on a book called ‘Making Friends With Depression.’ This is an early introduction. Not polished, not final. If it resonates, I’ll share more. If it doesn’t, that’s okay too. Thanks for reading and for being here.

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