Home » Mind & Soul » Depression » Eileen's Story

Eileen's Story

© John McManamy

"I became a good actress. I could smile, even laugh, on cue..."

She leads a life many of us would envy, on a one-acre plot in the Catskills where she grows her own vegetables, communes with nature, does crafts, decorates, gardens, sews, writes, and is a gourmet cook. But life was not always so kind. Eileen tells her own story:

I am a child abuse survivor. I have always suffered from clinical depression and post traumatic stress disorder. Depression was my only constant. As a small child, I started to embrace, even welcome it. It was the only thing that was mine, the only thing I could control, or so I thought. I would rhythmically moan and bump my head on the wall at the same time.

I also suffered, and still do, from flashbacks. They started in infancy. I was also born with a split or cleft lip. It was corrected when I was three months old. That was when I had my first "nervous breakdown."

I grew up during the sixties. Times were changing, but child welfare wasn't yet a top priority. Teachers weren't educated on child abuse and didn't readily recognize it. A child with depression was often overlooked as the quiet one, or, in my case, the emotional one. In many ways, I felt invisible, as if I didn't really exist.

(Thank goodness teachers these days are more equipped to identify and handle children like I was. I don't fault my old teachers. That's the way things were, back then.)

As I grew older, I created ways to hide my depression. I don't think anyone knew the pain I held inside. I became a good actress. I could smile, even laugh, on cue. At home I would fall apart and sink deeper into depression. Then, in my early teens, my mother went to work, and I was left to care for my youngest sister. I was busier than ever. I ran the household, and did the shopping and cooking. Besides all of that, I tried to hold friendships and keep my depression under wraps. Somehow, I pulled it off.

Then I entered the work force. I still don't know, to this day, how I held down a job for several years as a private duty nurse's aid, much less function "normally", in public - especially since my depression triggered terrifying flashbacks.

I got out of the abusive atmosphere of my parents' home when I got married. Yet the depressions persisted, then grew worse. Eventually, I became a basket case. I was having flashbacks at least once a week. I was always down. I really don't know how my husband stood me.

The copyright of the article Eileen's Story in Depression is owned by John McManamy. Permission to republish Eileen's Story in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.