By Lily Sawyer (Guest Author)
Thank you Lisabet for hosting me
today. I’d like to talk about a subject that is very personal,
one that I felt so strongly about that I wrote about it in my latest
release From the Depths.
Depression…far from an easy subject
to talk about, especially for someone who is suffering from it. It
was hard for me to come to terms that I suffer from depression. I
just thought it was stress and anxiety from day to day life, and
that the times I’d feel all sad and like life was not worth living
was something that would just go away. What is worse is not knowing
who you can turn to to talk about what you’re going through. I’d
been dealing with this on my own for most of my life. It wasn’t
until 2002 that I finally had enough. I found a pamphlet that had
contact information on it for local counseling groups. I contacted
one and was assigned a counselor. It’s hard to find someone to talk
to and it takes time to establish a report with a counselor. I went
through several counselors to find someone that I feel comfortable
with.
I went to some support groups. One of
the common denominators that was brought up was how frustrating it is
to try to get others to understand this is not something that is all
in your head. This isn’t the blues and that all you need to do is
snap out of it or decide that you’re not going to feel this way.
One guy’s own counselor wasn’t being supportive either. I told
him he should get another counselor, it’s hard especially if you
don’t have health insurance. They tend to just stick you with
someone and if you want to change to someone else they will say that
you need to communicate more with the one you have and tell them what
you need. That doesn’t ways work. Believe me I’ve tried it, I
left one counselor because she seemed more interested in adjusting
her air conditioning, using a remote control on the unit, than
listening to what I had to say. It felt like I was bothering her or
she had better things to do…uh, not what you’re getting paid for
lady.
I don’t have any easy answers as to
how you’re supposed to talk to someone who is depressed. Every
depressed person is different, the only thing I can say is to try to
deal with the person with compassion, understanding and most
importantly, patience. And don’t try to belittle their condition by
making light of it.
Two things that are currently helping
me is a book on cognitive therapy and my weekly meditation class.
They say that in writing you should
write what you know, or at least do that some of the time. And I
thought it was finally time to write something very personal to me
and that was how my latest book From the Depths came into
being. It was not an easy book to write. I debated on how much I
wanted to expose. I look at it now and think that either I exposed
too much or not enough. I could have gone into some of the very dark
places that my mind has taken me, but then I was concerned about not
being able to come out of it after the writing was done. I might
revisit this topic again and perhaps go to those dark places and peel
back the layers, much like an onion, into a condition that many have
but is hardly addressed.
Here is a blurb and excerpt from my
book:
Blurb
To the world, Harry Goldberg appears to
be a ordinary, happy-go-lucky man. He has a great job working at Nosh
Deli on Long Island. His co-workers and customers love him. But Harry
has a secret--he suffers from depression. No one understands what
it's like to live life on the edge and not to be able to let anyone
know for fear of driving them away. That is how Harry has led his
life, alone except for his faithful cat. But things change when a new
delivery man shows up at the deli; one that he finds himself
attracted to. But there is no one who can love someone with so much
emotional baggage like him--is there?
Excerpt
Harry had a wonderful job; he worked at
a deli on Long Island. He loved to watch the looks customers gave him
when he served them his special mile-high sandwich. Despite the huge
piles of hot pastrami and corned beef on rye with a pickle and
coleslaw on the side, they somehow left a clean plate.
The
people around Harry told him that he was a likeable kind of guy with
a great sense of humor. All his co-workers loved him. Truth was, he
had them all fooled. When he left the deli at the end of the day he
went home to an empty apartment; his only company, aside from
assorted houseplants, was his cat. Tom was a grey and white shorthair
Harry had rescued from the local pound. No one knew about Harry's
lonely existence, just like they didn't know he suffered with
depression. The only ones who knew, aside from his immediate family,
were his counselor and a support group he went to from time to
time.
Most people thought it was just the blues; at least that
was what his parents thought at first. His mom was the worst. When
Harry was fifteen, he'd buried himself in his bed and wouldn't come
out. She kept telling him stop being lazy, get his ass out of bed,
and snap out of it.
Unfortunately, they didn't understand what
it was like to feel as he did. No one knew how much Harry wanted to
be normal; he didn't want anyone's pity. No one could know the deep
pain he felt. Some days it got so bad he just wanted to lie down, go
to sleep, and never wake up.
* * * *
Nicholas
could never stand being cooped up inside some stuffy office building.
Nope, that was never going to happen. So when his uncle offered
Nicholas a job with his delivery company after he graduated high
school, he jumped at the chance. That was almost ten years
ago--driving a truck was in his blood now.
Stern's trucking
specialized in delivering kosher food to all the Jewish delis and
kosher markets on Long Island and in the five boroughs of New York
City.
He checked the manifest; there was a new restaurant on
the list. He'd been to Carle Place before but never to Nosh Deli. But
a job was a job. He'd done so many deliveries he could do them in his
sleep.
He loaded up his truck in Queens Village and headed
east to Long Island. He took the local roads, completely avoiding the
Long Island Expressway.
* * * *
Harry was
handling the lunch-hour-rush crowd. He'd lost count of how many
pastrami and corned beef sandwiches he'd made and how much homemade
coleslaw and potato salad he'd scooped out onto the plates.
"Can
I have a chicken on whole wheat bread, please?" Harry stopped
his automaton-like movements, taking notice of the customer behind
the voice--a blonde woman who appeared to be in her thirties, dressed
in business attire.
"Bless you. Thanks for breaking the
monotony."
She laughed. "You must get tired of the
same old orders every day."
Harry was on the receiving
end of that brilliant smile. The woman seemed to be flirting with
him. He had to admit she was an attractive woman. He noticed there
was no ring on her left hand. There was one problem, though--Harry
was gay. He'd known that girls didn't do anything for him that way
since he was fourteen. It was one more thing his mother had nagged
him about--dating women--until he came out to his parents. He
couldn't say they were thrilled, but at least they didn't throw him
out of the house. They just didn't talk about it. Besides, Harry
hardly ever went out. He had one experimental encounter with a buddy
in high school. They had given each other a hand job and that was
that.
Harry's self-esteem was in the basement. Who in their
right mind would want to date a guy who was a killjoy? Depression
robbed Harry of being able to really enjoy life. He was glad no one
at work was aware of the sad sack in their midst--and no one would
find out if he could help it.
He buried himself in work,
fixing orders for people like the woman who stood before him--he
wouldn't let anyone get too close.
Lily Sawyer has to credit her late
mother for her interest in reading and writing. She used to take her
to library and opened up to her the world of books. She took a
writing class in an adult enrichment program and got hooked. She
started off writing stories set in various fandoms she was interested
in like Star Trek and Brokeback Mountain. After getting some
encouragement from family members and friends, she finally decided it
was time to write her own original stories. Lily recently returned to
drawing and was in an art class. Also loves to garden and loves
everything about nature. Including going to the beach and looking up
at the stars.
