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Peggy's Story - Page 2

© John McManamy

I finally got to a place where I was seriously considering suicide, not because my life was so terrible, but because I did not have enough energy to get through the day, lots of days. It was like I was in this huge black hole and there was no life and no hope.

My granddaughter was born in April, and much to my surprise, I loved being a grandma. I think Jenny (who just turned two) was what kept me going. I kept thinking that I wanted to make a difference in her life. Nevertheless, it was a most unreal situation: I was not unhappy, but I was a walking corpse. In her book, Anatomy of the Spirit, Carolyn Myss talks about coming back from Alaska without her soul. She says it took months for her to reunite her soul and her body. Well, that's exactly how it was for me. I knew my soul was gone.

Finally, it got so bad that I decided to try a new doctor. I walked into her office and told her what was happening, and she said: "Peggy, I don't think this is menopause. I think this is depression."

I really believe she saved my life. She explained that depression is brought on by the drastic drop-off of the serotonin levels in the brain. She started me on Zoloft to help restore the balance, and within about three weeks I slowly began to get better. This was in June of 1998, and it took until February of this year for me to be able to say I am almost totally back to myself. I am gradually weaning myself off of the medication, but will stay on it if I have to. I wouldn't want to go back there again. But yet I learned so very much from it.

I learned that I am responsible for the choices I make, and that I had chosen to allow everyone else to come first always. So I decided to be more judicious. I came to realize my life (and everyone else's) was like a bank account, and that I had been making too many withdrawals. So had all my family. I had given them my AIM card and PIN number. I realized I had to take back my card and start to be very choosy about where my energy went.

Then I started to be ME. Not who my family and friends thought I SHOULD be, but ME, the real, honest-to-goodness ME. That was amazing and life-giving; probably the best thing I've ever done in my life. And it's fun and, amazingly, the other people in my life are surviving my "real self" just fine.

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