Mind

Being heavily depressed for most of one's adult life truly is a drag, to put it mildly. Mine started manifesting towards the end of my first year of 'varsity. A sudden illness, which made me so nauseous that I was until to eat anything other than drinking yoghurt for 3 weeks, appeared a couple of days before exams started. I went through blood tests, sonograms, x-rays, gastroscopies, dietary changes, supplements, drugs, and a homeopath, and nothing worked, until my gastroenterologist finally clicked and put me onto tranquilisers, which finally let me eat properly. Turned out it had been stress all along, so I went onto antidepressants and anxiolytics to try and control the stress and the depression that grew from it. That was 13 years ago.
Since then I've spent more time on the pills than off them. I've never been able to shake them completely for more than a couple of months before ending up in a heap of snot and tears and used tissues, with the boyfriend du jour staring down at me like I'd just grown a couple of extra limbs.
Mom didn't help, either. She started having unexplained epileptic seizures just after I got to varsity, which were serious enough to have me and the rest of the family very worried about her. By the time the neurologists figured out that she had a massive tumour in her brain, she'd gotten so used to the seizures that she could predict them and had taken to carrying around a specially-made mouthguard that she could slip into her mouth as the seizure started so the she wouldn't bite chunks out of her tongue.
She had the lump of evil removed, and things were much better, but after a relatively short time her health began declining again, and her ability to function sank down until she was a truly pitiful, almost entirely paralysed lump of flesh lying in bed, fantasising about the future and the revenge she'd take on those who said she wouldn't walk again. She died back in September, and the awful sadness at her passing has been dying back every day, with little resurgences when I hear a song she liked or see something that was dear to her.
I certainly can't say that mom's failing health was the sole reason for my depression and anxiety, but it definitely had a huge impact. My state of mind now that she's gone and the burden has been lifted is much clearer and more focused. No more what ifs to have to contemplate, no more dreading the coming date of her death. The house doesn't smell like urine any more. The pets are comping out of the torpor that they occupied while she was still resident in the main bedroom. We're repainting, mending, replacing. The house has gone from a place of dread and anguish back to the sunny, breezy home it used to be.
I've been told that the most important person in your life should be yourself. I'm not totally convinced by that, but I'll admit that mom was the most important person in mine for a very long time. Lovers, fiances and friends all took a back seat. I wasn't selfless, but if she needed something then I'd generally act to my own detriment to get it. I'm heavily in debt thanks to the bills that were run up while caring for her. I've lost friends thanks to moving back to my hometown to be with her. I've put on a huge amount of weight out of comfort eating and lack of exercise. I've had three root canals because I wasn't taking enough care of myself to be able to brush my teeth with any regularity. I'm still working on getting myself back into proper dental hygienic practices so that I don't end up as a gap-toothed wonder by the time I'm forty.
Time to move on, I think.