My Birthday Month: The Depression Wars

by Mike Lunsford, Editor-In-Chief of GGR

plus, a dude who is shocked that a “depression cake” Google search revealed that there’s actually something called depression cake! Seriously, look it up. It sounds delicious.

February is my birth month. For some people, that means a joyous 30 day period of getting whatever they want and constant adoration. I’m not one of those sorts. I’m good with a card, a birthday dinner, maybe some candy (because my birthday falls on the day after Valentine’s Day, you can get me a lot of cheap heart-shaped candy, too! Hint, Hint).

If I was the sort who wanted the extended month-long celebration, I might be mad that my birth month is only 28 days when everyone else gets AT LEAST 30 days. I’m just happy that I get to share my birthday with the likes of Lawrence Taylor, Darrell Green, Chris Farley and Matt Groening! Growing up, It was cool having some icons like those guys to share a birthday with, but there are way more notable people who share the day, too! Jaromir Jagr of ageless hockey fame, guitar virtuoso Gary Clark, Jr., the first notable on-screen Joker in Cesar Romero, funny man extraordinaire Harvey Corman, inventor of the mechanical reaper fellow Virginian and burned-into-my-brain-forever-thanks-to-elementary-history-books Cyrus McCormick (btw Mechanical Reaper sounds like a great sci-fi horror flick) , lead singer for Incubus Brandon Boyd, and famous Italian scientist and “father of observational astronomy” Galileo!

If only I lived in Hawaii! Eminem is playing for my birthday! You can’t convince me otherwise!

At any rate, I swear I don’t think about my birthday that much! It used to be a cool thing, now it’s just a reminder of getting older. I’m just happy that I get a day where people tend to be a bit nicer to me.

There was a 5 year stretch where February was actually pretty awful. Starting in 2010, my Grandmother passed away a few days before my birthday. She was my mom’s mom and she was quite possibly the coolest person ever. I was her first grandkid so I was therefore the favorite. She was caring, kind, soft-spoken but just an overall wonderful human being. She loved the arts, whether it be an Italian opera or dick and fart jokes on Two and a Half Men. She was also hardcore as hell. In the 40s, she was a nurse in Brooklyn and was going to see a Broadway show when a supervisor told her she had to cancel her plans and go to work. They disagreed, my Grandmother told him where he could shove it, and quit her job. By the end of the year, she was serving as a nurse in the Army in India. How badass is that?

not actually my Grandmother, but I’m sure she did things like this.

She traveled the world, ended up having 6 grandchildren and 1 great grandchild and lived to be 92. She is my hero and I miss the heck out of her, but she lived one heck of a life.

4 years later, my mom lost her 12 year battle with cancer. That was a gut punch I wasn’t expecting as she had fought it for so long, it just seemed like something she’d live with forever. I mean, it’s an inevitability of life that everyone eventually has to die, but we joked that she would live to be 80 at the rate she was going. It’s been 5 years since she died and I still think I’m not 100% over it. Losing your mom never really gets easier, you just find a way to keep moving forward.

The following year, both of my Dad’s parents died. This was upsetting, but there was a beautiful story in how it happened. I talked about it here in greater detail. My grandparents had been married for over 70 years. They both got sick nearly simultaneously and were both in the hospital. My Grandmother passed away on the 13th of February, my Grandfather on the 15th. They went together…and my Pop Pop didn’t leave until all of his kids had made it home to Virginia. It was sad but beautiful.

I’ve now gone (fingers crossed) 4 years without losing ANOTHER loved one within a week of my birthday. With as much sad feelings around my birthday, it’s hard to be super excited about a month that has become a reminder of how mortal we are. Not only that, it’s cold! It gets dark at like 4pm! And in the Mid-Atlantic, it’s grey and dreary for most of the fall and winter…all things that make this month a winter wonderland of depression and not wanting to do a damn thing.

Now, the struggle with depression is not just a “sad stuff has happened” sort of thing. No, it’s genetic. Both my parents struggled with it, so I come by it honest. I think what frustrates me the most is that there are still people out there who believe that depression is a made up issue, that it’s all mind over matter. To a certain extent, there is SOME truth to physical activity, being outside, etc helping with depression. Physical activity helps with creating melatonin, which helps you sleep, which helps fight one of the worst side effects of depression. But let’s be CRYSTAL CLEAR about this: short of a licensed physician, therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist or any other medical professional, your opinion about what will cure depression or “depression is just a made up word” non-sense is NEVER welcome. It’s an actual medical condition.

If you have a friend or loved one who is fighting depression, please don’t give them some rousing speech about how “it’s all made up, it’s just in your head.” Technically, it IS in your head: your brain isn’t functioning properly and needs assistance. But it is most certainly not made up. There is also some truth to the concept of positive reinforcement and positive thought helping heal others, but you can’t tell someone who is diabetic that “it’s all in you head. Just think positive!” The same is true for people with mental health issues. Their body is missing something that can be helped by medicine. Deep down, we all want to help each other, but trying to convince someone that their problems aren’t real is not the best solution, especially when doing so could actually make things worse.

I wish I didn’t have it. I wish I didn’t lose the battles. There are nights that I watch sappy movies and cry, essentially to exhaust myself to sleep. There are nights when I have to distract myself with music just so my own thoughts don’t keep me awake. Sometimes those thoughts are non-sensical reenactments of things that happened years ago or kicking myself for stupid things I did.

I can’t believe I made an “I’ll do it ‘Obama’” self joke to the friggin President of the United States. I’m such an idiot!

You hate yourself for not being perfect. You hate yourself because you didn’t go see your mom one more time before she died. You hate yourself because you haven’t made more of your life and you feel like you squandered all the opportunities you’ve had to make those lost loved ones proud. There are days when those awful thoughts don’t even pop into your head. You are positive, everything is great, you watch some Quantum Leap and you go right to sleep. Then there are days when it’s all you can think about. Those thoughts and regrets have a physical weight: they bog you down. You feel sluggish, like you’re wearing a lead vest. You don’t want to get out of bed, sometimes you can’t get out of bed. You feel broken and you’re not sure why. None of this is fake. None of this is “a made up word.”

A new phrase that has made it’s way into our lexicon is “this is a hill I will die on.” Mental health acceptance: not awareness, everyone knows it exists, I need people to accept that it’s a real thing, is my hill. This is something I’ve felt. This is something I’ve seen cripple loved ones. This is something I struggle with on a daily basis and I want everyone to at a bare minimum accept that not everyone can be fixed and cured with a stern talking-to. People sometimes need help and that is a hill will I’m willing to die on, metaphorically of course.

This entry in my editorial corner has taken a bit of a somber turn but rest assured folks, I do this as a means of therapy. Do I think this might help someone with their issues? Not really, but heck if this helps you then hot damn! I did something good! It’s meant as a verbose letter of camaraderie to those fighting this war as well. That’s what depression is: a war. It’s not simply a battle. A battle implies just one skirmish and a finite amount of time expended. Depression is hundreds of battles, with the tide ebbing and flowing constantly. How do we win this war? Together. By supporting one another. By talking with each other and never judging them for things they can not control. We all need some help sometimes. Don’t ever be ashamed of that. We can win this war together. Remember: don’t be a juicebag.