Isolation

Financially we are still in the pits. I ask those who read this to make this a focus of some urgent prayer. Most immediately we need about $3,500.00 to get us to the point we were before my most recent hospitalization. I have contacted NAMI and am looking for a referral for a lawyer who can handle bankruptcy and a SSI/Disability claim. Immediate needs include bringing our checking account back into the black catching up on utilities, paying for the car and redeeming all of our bounced checks.

It is hard to not feel down when you are staring at that debt plus past debts that push that number up 20 times the immediate need. The medication is helping, and I need to make my second counseling appointment. Life is a stress factory and this night shift is beginning to get to me again. I am fighting to stay awake at home and maintain my schedule. Everything that is done seems to be geared toward a 1st or 2nd shift schedule. It would be so VERY easy to use the schedule as a reason to isolate. Its a catch-22 for me. If I go to church or events I feel like hell because it throws off my sleep schedule. If maintain my sleep schedule then it is easer to not do it the next time. Then the true isolation starts. It is worsened by the fact that I have medications that must be taken at HS (Hours of Sleep) and in the AM.

While we are on the subject of isolation, I have a question. Why? Why do we do the one thing that seems to make us worse? Why do we isolate from those we love, and who love us? I am not sure that I know the answer to that one. I know that left to my own that is exactly what I would do. Personally I see it a lot like AIDS. AIDS has this insidious way of attacking the immune system. (My understanding-- It prevents the production of white blood cells to prevent infection. Actually taking over and converting the systems that normally produce the white blood cells into systems to reproduce itself. Thus it robs your body of the thing it needs most to fight off the HIV virus.) Isolation is like that with depression, and I suppose other mental illnesses. It robs us of one of the most significant tools we have to fight the symptoms of our disease.

What does the person with depression need. They need companionship. They need friendship. Let me rephrase that I need friendship, and companionship. I need someone with whom I can just get together on a Saturday (ok were back to sleep schedules here) or when ever and just do something. We need to be able to laugh together, without seeing laughter in and of itself as a cure for my disease. We need to be able to cry together without seeing crying as a relapse. I remember my best friend and I in High School just sitting in his room. He would lay on his bed and I would read the latest batch of poetry he would write. We would discuss it every now and then, and just shoot the breeze. It was more then that though it was the cement that kept us both sane (or fairly so) through some very termultuous times in our lives.

It is said that men need three men in there lives. They need a Paul, a mentor, someone they can trust and look up to. They need a Timothy, a ward, to whom they can impart the wisdom they have gained. They also need a Barnabus, an encourager, someone who can come along side. I think the same can be said for all of us, male or female. It is in these relationships that we are all formed and completed. Wisdom flows in, wisdom flows out, and we have someone there to stir it up enough to make sure some of it sticks.