Mistake or Miracle...How I “Disappeared” My Chronic Depression

Mistake or Miracle…How I “Disappeared” My Chronic Depression

I knew a young girl who suffered with chronic depression. She became depressed at the age of twelve and lived that way for the next forty years. She cried all the time, and no one could figure out what was wrong with her. Her parents tried to reason with her, but there was no consoling her. Eventually, not knowing what to do, her parents punished her for crying and for being sad. This made her hide her sadness, but it didn’t make her less sad.

That young girl was me.

I wasn’t like the other kids in school because I couldn’t be happy. I couldn’t look forward to dances, going to the beach and to parties, because my life was about sadness.

I grew up to be a sad adult. Over the decades, I missed so much. I used to enjoy hearing other people laugh and have fun. You could say I learned to live vicariously because I just couldn’t be happy. I was on and off antidepressant medication more times than I care to recall. I thought the meds would make me happy, but they just dulled the pain that had become my life.

I used to think those who were no longer alive were the lucky ones because they weren’t dealing with “this” anymore…

If I’m painting a bleak picture, it’s because it’s all true.

It’s been more than seven years since I’ve lived with that black cloud of chronic depression.

I wouldn’t go back to living that way for anything. There is nothing you could offer me that would make me go back; nothing.

I survived that way for more than forty years, so I know firsthand what living with depression is like. It’s a darkness and a pall that spread over your world. It makes facing every day facing the unknown. You don’t know how bad it will be; whether you will get through the day ok or whether it will be a struggle that makes you feel as if you are in a deep hole with your eyes just above ground level struggling to see the world where everyone else is out, about and living.

The title of this article is “Mistake or Miracle” as this happened to me completely by accident. I changed how I eat all at once; I ripped the band aid off, if you will, and I did it to try to back my husband off a diagnosis of pre-diabetes. We had to normalize his sugar and get his cholesterol under control so we could get him off the statin drug that was killing him and pushing him to Type 2 Diabetes.

What we did was simple and difficult at the same time. We went through our pantry and fridge and got rid of everything in a box. In addition, we became devoted label readers and got everything out of our diet that had more than five real ingredients and/or that had sugar, gluten, dairy, etc.

We turned from convenience and packages to eating very simple whole food. Lots of salads, lots of fresh veggies and berries. We had long since stopped eating meat but now, we became “pescatarians” I guess you would term our eating style. Lots of vegetarian meals with wild fish to supplement our protein.

We didn’t starve, and we each lost twenty pounds without trying to lose weight. We grew to love the way we eat because we began to feel fantastic!

Our efforts were a success too, because my husband was able to back himself off from the threat of diabetes. We got his cholesterol levels all into the normal range, and all without the Lipitor that had been causing him so many health issues.

We began this adventure in the fall of 2012. In the spring and summer of 2013, I had to sell my family home. Both my parents had passed away, and it was time to let go of the house where I grew up. It was not something I wanted to do at all, and we were both waiting for me to go into a massive, deep, life sucking depression. What was truly remarkable was that I did not go there.

I’m not saying I was happy. The truth is I was sad; very sad. I was appropriately sad however, and if you’ve ever been depressed, you know there is a real difference between being depressed and being appropriately sad. That was the first clue we had that something miraculous was happening.

Seven years later, I still eat the same way. I don’t ever want to return to the dark decades of most of my life. Sure, I look back with regret that “if only I had known earlier what I know now; if only doctors understood nutrition and the effect food has on your mind as well as your body”. I wonder what my life could have been if this miracle or mistake had only happened earlier on. But then I stop and wonder that it might never have happened at all. I might still be on and off antidepressants. I might still be living feeling exhausted all the time and struggling to hide my depression from everyone including myself.

Mistake or miracle? It doesn’t matter. The transformation happened, and I am eternally grateful I have a new life, a new reality of positivity and optimism I hadn’t enjoyed since before I was twelve years old. I’m also grateful I have the ability and desire to write and to speak about it so I can share this with others. It’s a story that needs to be told, and I am very ready to share it!

Helping You Achieve Major Wellness!

Cheryl A Major, CNWC

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