Eileen's Story

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.

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