"...some blow or loss, guilt or rejection….”

Last Saturday (a week ago) was a really bad day for me. I slept all day, got up for three hours and went back to bed again until Sunday morning. I cried for much of the three hours I was up and all during church the next morning too. I had been reading the chapter called "Depression" in Healing for the Wounded Soul by John and Paula Sanford. It described me so well and really hit me. The book is intended for people who want to help others heal, not for the wounded themselves and as I read what they were recommending the "healers" do and not do for the depressed I couldn't help but wish that I had people like that here, around me. At church on Sunday, I felt very disconnected. But I'm sure that was me and not the folks at church because quite a few people came and hugged me.

Since then, I have gone back to reread the chapter on depression and take notes. As I did this, something interesting happened. I was reading, “Performance orientation… [lies] in some degree behind every person in depression … though it may not be the primal cause. The first cause, some blow or loss, guilt or rejection….” And at this point, a memory came to me but I’ll finish the quote first. “…is like the spark, but the performance orientation is the tinder. Or the wound is the seed, but performance orientation is the fertile ground where depression may quietly grow.”

The memory that hit me like a load of bricks was the car accident we had two days after my fourth birthday. It wasn’t a hidden memory but it has never hit me the way it did that day. It was Christmas Day and we were driving into the city to go to church. My dad was driving, my mom was in the front seat holding my not-quite-three-year-old sister on her lap. I was in the back seat between my paternal grandparents. I think there might have been an uncle with us or something but I can’t remember. The roads were icy and my dad liked driving fast (so I’ve heard). Just as we were nearing the city (I still know the spot though it’s now industrial instead of farm fields), Dad lost control of the car. Mom’s door flew open, my sister flew out the door with Mom following and the car following both of them until it landed in the snow-filled ditch, pinning my sister under the car, the hot engine pressed against her cheek. They couldn’t get her out. I sat screaming, unsure whether my mom and/or sister would live, and my grandfather very harshly told me to be quiet.

It took half an hour to finally get the car off my sister. During that time, someone was trying to flag down a car to help, but no one stopped for the longest time, until finally an immigrant who could hardly speak English stopped to help (maybe HE was the extra man I remember). Once my sister was rescued, the man took her (and her cooked face) and my parents to the hospital but he dropped my grandparents and me off at a bus stop and we proceeded to church. I remember very vividly, the bus stop and waiting there. I know that corner too. I don’t remember anything after that.

But as this memory came into my mind (taking only a flash of a second), I began to cry. I can’t remember ever crying about that accident. And for the first time, consciously, I began to wonder what would have happened to me if my mom and sister HAD died. It was a very scary thought.

That was Sunday afternoon. Wednesday I saw my psychiatrist. She was asking me questions and the accident came up again and, once again, I could hardly speak because of the tears. Obviously there’s something there that needs a closer look. Somehow it seems to be connected to my depression, but how? Why? The doctor asked me how the accident then is impacting my life now and all I could think of was my tendency to be a people pleaser or, what the book was talking about, performance orientation. My doctor seemed to suggest that there’s something else or something different. I haven’t a clue. I do know that going over that chapter again really gave me insight into myself.