Carol Frye
I will always like JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series because first she accurately described my own depression as she wrote of the dementors who guarded Azkaban prison, and secondly she wrote of one of the deathly hallows being a cloak of invisibility.
I had my own cloak of invisibility, and it had the potential to be deadly.
I was raised in a family and community convinced that mental health struggles could be successfully resolved with enough prayer. When I was a teenager, I tried asking my Mom for a doctor’s help with my depression. Her response was that because she physically couldn’t tolerate pharmaceuticals, and because she knew pharmaceuticals designed to treat depression could harm an unborn baby, she had a personal religious objection not only toward taking pharmaceuticals, but also toward allowing her daughters to take them. This was one of many times she never saw, heard, or valued me, so I knew I had found another topic which was decided for me, and it was useless for me to bring it up again for as long as my parents had authority over me.
I knew intuitively that more than just my mind had deficiencies. I was a teen experiencing physical symptoms not discussed in the library books I checked out in my search to try to find answers. My Mom didn’t have any answers herself, and easily dismissed my concerns.
But when I was 19 years old, I haemorrhaged, and scared my parents so badly they were very willing for doctors to provide tests and answers. I got my permanent infertility diagnosis of severe polycystic ovarian syndrome, which was my genetic inheritance. I tried to explain that to my parents, but they could not or did not understand, and offered me religious claptrap about how my diagnosis was going to be healed if I only prayed hard enough and had faith that I would be healed.
My four sisters married and began having children. My parents were delighted with each new addition, and pressured me to congratulate my sisters. My parents used their words to promote procreation as the main purpose for marriage, so my choice to marry for love twice was subject to their condemnation. My whole family was subject to my choice to intentionally exclude them from both of my weddings.
A year and a half ago, I ended all association with my Mom and sisters. Then I chose a new doctor, and for the second time in my life, I verbalized my mental health deficiencies. My doctor listened and provided both medications and behavioral health counseling. He thanked me for choosing to be honest and vulnerable. All he asked was that I do a pregnancy test before I left his office, and I did. The results were exactly the same as all the other pregnancy tests since I was 19 years old: negative.
That means I could have been on the pharmaceuticals to treat depression long before I was, because there never was an unborn baby in my womb for that medication to harm. I went through 20 years of toxic family relationships, and when I finally ended those, and began to heal, and seek help, my Mom and sisters demoted me from Carol to “mentally unstable.” I just smiled, because insanity for me was losing myself, my peace, my self-respect, my voice to keep those toxic relationships. My depression symptoms eased up immediately after my toxic family were out of my life. I began to experience peace for the first time in my adult life, and this confidence that I can trust myself to make good decisions.
I’m no longer wearing an invisibility cloak. I’m heard, seen, and valued, and no longer struggling with depression as in days past.
Oh, and my polycystic ovarian syndrome? With my forty-second birthday last December, my symptoms eased up considerably. Aunt Flo only visited 4 times last year, and only a few days at a time.
I wasn’t able to share all of this before now because I hadn’t figured out how I was going to solve my problem. But now that I have, I’m pleased to report that my life has never been so good before.
