Newscoma

Katie Allison Granju at Knoxville Talks pointed to an article about depression in people in their forties.

As I’m in my forties, I wish to opine.

I think everyone goes through depression from childhood on. Of course there are severe and debilitating mental health issues that are factor for many such as bipolar disorder or just good old fashioned clinical depression but sometimes folks just get a good old case of the blues. I’ve often wondered about the difference between a physical depression and situational ones.

With that said, the article she refers to makes a fine point regarding that there is a sense of not meeting goals that seemed so accessible when, let’s say, I was in my late teens. The shoulda-woulda-coulda syndrome does set in. It did for me to a large degree. I’ve often said I’m too poor for a red sports car and too tired to have an illicit affair so during the mid-life crisis that hit me, I started blogging and I threw myself into learning things that scared me.

Then something wonderful happened.

I really got to a point for the first time in my life that other people’s impressions of me did not make as much of an impact as it did when I was younger. And I started to speak my mind a bit more but learned to be diplomatic about it. I also learned that sometimes people are not acting out of character. They are what they are. And I am what I am. And sometimes those things just don’t mesh.

Middle-age is an odd thing. The article talks about that people in their forties get “down” because they see people they know and love get ill or die. I do have a sense of mortality that I didn’t have even 15 years ago. But, with that said, the 10 year anniversary of my mother’s death is coming up next month and that’s when those feelings started to become more prevalent. If she could die so horribly, then so could I.

You think about these things.

But I want to also say that the year I turned 40 was one of the most liberating times of my life. I shed some emotional skin that had created roadblocks for my personal development. I appreciated patience a bit more.

I believe that sometimes if you realize that you are in a depression and you can recognize that “HEY, I’m depressed over a situation” or “Whoa, I’m not feeling so well and I don’t know why” then you have a better understanding of being part of the solution instead of feeding into the problem. It’s not easy to get there, but it works for me. And there is nothing wrong with asking for help from your friends, your family and, if necessary, a professional. It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you smart because the only person who is going to take care of you is you. There is nothing wrong with saying “Help.”

People who say they never get depressed used to irritate me. Now I realize that we channel our own emotions into what is comfortable. Let’s say anger is comfortable for some people but I’ve always believed that anger is just bubbling repression of loss of identity or control over a situation which of course, are things that can make you depressed.
If you aren’t in your forties and this makes no sense whatsoever, I get that as well. But we are all the same when it comes to our feelings to a large degree.

And one thing that I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that feelings change, and with that knowledge, I know there is hope of a bit of sunshine at the end of a dark tunnel.