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For many years when my husband and I were first together I would ask him
"When are things going to get better?" We were dealing with the
usual stressors that couples face: not enough time, not enough money,
and the inevitable random events such as family conflict, deaths of
loved ones, illnesses and injuries. In addition, for most of our
early years together I was in school and struggling with the balancing
of demands of advanced education, part-time work, and a family.
But I had the belief that we were working towards this perfect life that one
day would emerge shining a rainbow of happiness forever over us. My
husband, inclined more toward the practical, just answered my question
of "When are things going to get better?," with "Another six months."
That answer typically pacified me for awhile because I thought I could
handle any amount of stress for six months.
However, a point would
occur when I once again I asked my husband "When are things going to get
better?" Once again, he would answer "Another six months."
This scenario occurred fairly routinely for many years.
One day when I was seven–years–old my father allowed me to choose our Sunday family activity. He said
we could either take a drive across the Mississippi River or ride on the last streetcar in St. Louis.
At that time of my life I had never seen an ocean or even a great lake and I was awed by the vastness
of the Mississippi River. It never occurred to me that the river would always be there and the streetcars
might not. I chose the river. Of course, driving across the river took all of fifteen seconds.
Immediately after we crossed the bridge I regretted my decision. My regret at the time was that
the streetcar excursion would have been lengthier. My regret later was that I never again had the
opportunity to ride a streetcar in St. Louis.
Listening
to the weather forecast one frigid day, I realized how much we are
influenced by the catastrophic thinking of the media. The
weatherman reported, "The weather has brought more misery to the St. Louis area."
Certainly, the weather was causing problems that day. An ice storm caused
car doors and locks to be frozen so that people had a great deal of trouble
getting into their cars. However, I thought, unless someone was in the
middle of nowhere with no cell phone and they were unable to open their car door
because of the ice, this was not "misery." Instead, I would call it an
"inconvenience." Most of us walked out to our cars to find that we
couldn't open the door, went back inside a warm house or office, and found some
solution to our problem.
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A serious problem exists with the public's understanding of depression. The problem occurs because of the clinical term "Major Depression" and the general use of the word "depression." One of the definitions in the Merriam-Webster dictionary indicates that depression is "a state of feeling sad." Therefore, the general public typically defines "depression" interchangeably with "sadness" as in "I'm so depressed today." The tendency, then, is to assume that clinical depression is just extreme sadness or the inability to handle normal stress and sadness of life.
