The first five words of Katie Riegel’s insightful post reveal a crippling secret I’ve kept hidden for nearly a year. I am stuck. Strangely, bewilderingly, frustratingly stuck.
Somewhere between the desperate hope of a terminal woman and the overwhelming joy of one delivered from death, I began to question why. Why was I saved? Why did so many people I don’t even know support me? What have I done to my kids? And how can I ever live a life that truly honors my donor, my family, my friends, my medical team and all the rest?
Will you have the same epiphany I did?
I’ve been a little paralyzed to write since the utterly unexpected popularity of my “Depression is a Trip” post. How do you follow something that seems to speak to so many people? And of course, depression tells us that we can’t, that any success was a fluke, that really we’re fakes, and the world will soon discover our deception and unmask us as the failures we are.
I wrote that post for myself, because metaphor helps me think, and for my husband, who wants to solve everything for me because he is an engineer and a man and he loves me. I wrote it because I couldn’t not write it.
All of which is, perhaps, an apologetic lead-up to this post. Which is exactly the point.
One of the most interesting comments on that other post was about apologizing. The commenter’s point was that people with depression should…
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