At first I was afraid, then I was petrified...

The thing about life is that you have to experience it to understand it.  It seems like such an obvious statement, but I often forget.  I fall into this pattern of thinking that I understand someone else's life, thoughts and feelings.  But I am most surprised when I think i know what to expect and things turn out totally different - much more intensive and profound then I ever imagined.

When I left home for West Point, everyone said it would be hard.  I didn't understand. I was smart, hardworking, in good physical shape and determined - how hard could it be? It wasn't until I started to experience the extreme amount of daily stress and pressure, the complete loss of personal space and time, the constant demands and homesickness (oh I missed my mommy!) that I started to understand.

Same with going oversees for OEF and OIF.  Again, it wasn't until I lived in constant mortal fear for myself and my soldiers (not just from attacks - mostly from the day to day stresses that cause suicide and mental breakdowns), until I watched families fall apart during the deployment, and careers end because of bad personal decisions that I started to understand that war changes people forever.

Then I got married and everyone talked about how hard marriage is.  We were in love and it wasn't hard to spend 24/7 together, how hard could it be?  Learning self-sacrifice, patience, obedience (oh yeah, I said that - a conversation for later), shared- goal making...well you get the picture.  Then came kids.  It truly does fundamentally change you to be 100% responsible for someone else's everything.  Food, water, exercise, security, stability, spirituality, education...again, you get it.  The most profound change with having kids is structuring your day to accommodate their minute by minute needs and happiness.  Kids are why there are drive throughs - you get hungry when your kid falls asleep in the car and you hate the thought of waking them up to get food because you are so hungry you are dizzy....but i digress.

Even though I have had bouts of depression and have been no stranger to mental illness, I had no idea.  You know the commericial "Who does depression hurt - everyone".  That didn't make sense to me.  I could control my depression and make sure (so I thought) it wasn't hurting anyone else.  

About a year ago, I had a great conversation with another West Point Grad/Stay at home mom.  We laughed about how we could led hundreds of soldiers and millions worth of equipment through downtown Baghdad but were brought to our knees by toddlers who refused to potty train and take scheduled naps.  This is normal.  Every parent (whether or not they've been to Iraq) experiences failure.  

But depression, at least for me, is not being able to get past the failures.  It is my mind telling me that I am a huge failure as a parent, will always be and am damaging my family by even being here.  After a while, my mind gets so loud that I can not try anymore.  I can not push it aside and accomplish even the most simple things because the war is my head is so intense that I am exhausted and defeated and have failed even before I try.  And when you live like that, you can't simple grow out of it, man up or hope it goes away.  It is insidious.  An out of control weed.

My therapy systematically starts to translate the things in my head (and there are millions of damning statements) so I can give voice to them and figure out for myself if I am going to chose to believe them. But I have to pinpoint each thought and break them down completely.  I have to own the truth.  And I have to eliminate each of these statements, because the continuation of even one will spread and grow out of control.  

My therapy also involved figuring out if and how my neurons are misfiring and if my hormones are raging.  Medication helps control these things so I can actually make my mind work hard enough to examine myself.  

Yesterday someone in group shared that they were told that Therapy was a bunch of rich white people sitting around bitching about their problems and they should all just move on.  And maybe that is true for some groups.  But there is heartache and ruined lives in my group being rebuilt.  And i want to rebuild my life.  I want to be brought to my knees by normal things, not everything.