by B. Ann Patterson

Created on: April 04, 2010

I’m at the bottom of a deep, dark tunnel and the small opening at the top is getting farther and farther away.  It’s a cold place.  I have no strength to call out for help.  My mind doesn’t seem to work and I can’t think of how to get back to my little 4-year-old Beverly or 12 and l3 year old Tracy and Nancy.  I can’t feel anything, even love.  “Oh God, where are You?  Do you even care about me?  I don’t want to live anymore.”

 As a mother and wife, I have failed.  For years, this terrible illness has hit me often.  At times, it has caused me to fade away and my family has suffered as I pulled away from them.  At those times, I slept many hours of everyday.  My energy slipped away so that I could hardly cook meals for them.  I let them down.

 The depression started early in my life.  I remember that when I was 8 years of age, would crawl under my bed, cry and bang my head against the floor.  I’ve forgotten what sent me under the bed those days. 

Perhaps it started because my father was an alcoholic or my mother was often angry and ignored me except when she wanted me to do housework.  Or, maybe it was because my father and all of his siblings were depressed people because their father was mean.  He committed suicide when I was 10. 

 Perhaps I suffered this lifelong illness as an adolescent and adulthood because of child sexual abuse.  During my tenth year, a great uncle who was a pedophile chose me as his victim.  I was a quiet, shy child who kept to myself.  That may have been the reason that my mother and grandparents thought it was good that I was his favorite among all of his nieces.  My father had left us and lived 3,000 miles away during that year.
 
 When Daddy returned home, my parents announced that we were moving from Oklahoma to California.  At that moment, he became my hero.  I would be free.  However, I did not know that the shame and pain of that year would be on my mind for the remainder of my life. 

 Perhaps another cause for the depression was the fact that I knew at age sixteen, I came to know that I was born a lesbian but it was dangerous to come-out.  My father recognized that I was gay and encouraged me not to come-out for that reason as well as the fact that I would never be able to become a teacher.  Therefore, in the

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