UNIT 20 Disability

藝弊悝汜炾釬

Setting My Heart with the Stars

by Jessica Terwilliger, Burnt Hills High School

This is the second time that I have written an article about depression for the disabilities awareness newsletter. Perhaps I feel compelled to write on the subject because it is a selfish disease. It seeps into every crevice of one＊s life; it refuses to be ignored, to be relegated to some obscure corner of the mind. Perhaps I＊m writing about it because of what I have learned about my relationship with the disease. Perhaps the time has come when I＊m ready to stop cursing the depression and start embracing it.

What I＊m about to say is terribly unfashionable, and I hope that you will forgive any offense that it may cause. In all truthfulness, I＊m glad that I have lived with depression as a companion. This statement does not imply that I have relished the grief and guilt the disease has borne. It does not mean that I have enjoyed the fits of despair, the self-imposed isolation, or the shared sorrow of my friends and family. I would not wish this illness upon anyone, yet I don＊t know if I could banish it from my own life, were I given the chance.

On a recent episode of ER, a physician who was deaf queried, "Did you ever think that being deaf might not be so bad?" She had accepted that her deafness was a part of her life, without allowing it to define who she was. For quite a while, I wasn＊t able to see my depression in that way. When it was first diagnosed, I didn＊t want to admit that this was something that would affect my existence. I wanted to rid myself of the illness immediately. As the years passed, however, I let myself become the incarnation of the disease. Lurking at the edge of my consciousness was the thought that I should resist the attempts to heal the depression. A part of me believed that if I let the medications and psychotherapy take the depression away from me, I would be lost. Rather than seeing myself as a person with depression, I saw myself as a depressed person. The distinction is subtle but significant.

I have finally reached the point where I can see both the horrors and the beauty of depression. It is something that should be neither glorified nor reviled. I am able to hate the illness for stealing away moments of my childhood while simultaneously appreciating the insight it has helped me to gain. Had I not known the absolute anguish it brought, I would not now recognize supreme happiness. Had I not experienced the heartache of personal defeat, I would not find such succor in emotional triumph. Had there not been times when I thought of killing myself, I would not now be in love with living. Reviewing various notable individuals who lived with a form of depression - F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henrik Ibsen, Mark Twain, George Frederic Handel, Robert Schumann, Robert Bums, Emily Dickinson, Victor Hugo, Dylan Thomas, Georgia O＊Keeffe, Ray Charles, Francis Ford Coppola, John Kenneth Galbraith, Soren Kierkegaard - I can＊t help but wonder if their accomplishments were not just in spite of, but partially because of, their illness.

Oscar Wilde once wrote, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." I have reached a point in my life where I can concur with that sentiment. At last, I have realized that lying in the mud enhances the times when I＊ve set my heart with the stars.

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蔬劼吽噪蔬詢撰笢悝