My Dear Cousin - My Body Shut Down

6^th May 2021

My dear cousin,

As we have established, by the age of fourteen I had lost my mother, was living in a slum suffering abuse on the regular, and my old man was only a part of my life on weekends. It should be no mystery as to why I had trouble in high school. I had problems and when problems go ignored they just get bigger and bigger until they force you to do something about them.

My body shut down, and I was having trouble with my grades. I remember vomiting every morning and asking the old man to take me to a doctor, but he refused. I couldn’t concentrate on most of what I was reading and had trouble holding my hands up to type.

I once mentioned to the old man that I had setup my keyboard in such a way as to make it more ergonomically sound, but my hands hurt when I typed. He sat me down and said “I’m tired, my back is hurting, I’m worried about a fight I had with my wife…” and so on. I asked him what his point was and he said I complained too much.

He labeled me a hypochondriac and the whole family called me a hypochondriac for more than ten years after that. Hypochondria being a real medical condition were a person feels bad and believes themselves to be ill were no cause can be found I asked to be treated for my problem.  You treat hypochondria like you do depression, they could be just the same thing, so I asked to see a psychiatrist. The old man said “it’s all in your head” and refused to take me.

I did participate in sports in high school. I fared as well as anyone who is dangerously depressed, but the teams I played on were so small they couldn’t practice without me. Years later my old man would mention that I passed my sports physicals as evidence that nothing was wrong with me. I reminded him that the doctor had ordered a blood test, and he had refused to take me. 

I nearly flunked out of school my third year. The old man screamed and screamed, and insisted I was just lazy. That was his Modus Operandi, he would first laugh at my problems, and when they didn’t go away, he would then scream at my problems. Never did he try to resolve them in any meaningful way. 

Two weeks before I graduated high school I got my last check from the government. Survivors benefits from my mother’s death.  That same day I got a job. After that, well, that’s for my next letter.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

Battled Bepression

By the fact that this letter has no name at it's end I can tell I never finished it. Well, I was depressed. 

In any case, I hope what is there makes good reading. 

6^th March 2014

Dear Mr. (YouTuber),

It was the fifth of March that you asked your audience, of which I am one, to tell you the stories of their depression. I have battled depression for the whole of my life, and so the story of my depression cannot be held in a comment. So long a story needs thought and introspection notwithstanding the need of all things done by the depressed: time.

My depression found its start in the rough handling I received in tender youth. The youngest of three children in an unsupervised home my older siblings would unite against me as a force of violence and so I would fight until exhaustion against them. This prompted my mother to send my older (sibling) to live with other family members for a summer, but it did little good as (they) had to come back for the school year.

These beatings of youth left me with what is called transient brain damage as a result of trauma to the back of my head. I struggled to read and struggled to write because of this problem, and even now I would be unable to write this letter coherently without a program that reads my work back to me as the written word and I simply do not get along.

My depression worsened with my mother’s second relapse of cancer. She fought the disease for as long as she could but lost and died a week after my tenth birthday. My father was what one may call an absentee parent. He would arrive at my residence on Friday night and leave Sunday evening, and so I would see him for the weekend. This left the home in the care of my older (sibling) who, mentally ill and violent, ruled by needless force.

At the time, in wake and sleep my life was a nightmare. In my waking times I stood silent looking after myself and staying away from siblings as best I could. I often had dreams where my hands were cut off, and I learned in college this is symbolic of the feeling of helplessness.  

By age fourteen my depression had reached its height, and I could hardly lift my hands. I had medical insurance, but my father refused to take me to see a psychiatrist. Why I cannot with certainty say, but he would always dismiss my maladies with “it’s all in your head” or “You’re a hypochondriac”.

For much of my high school years I felt like a piece of dead meat with a soul trapped within. There were times I would sit in bed unable to sleep but unable to stand as if a prisoner in my own flesh. Every morning I would vomit, I’m not sure why, before or when I got to school.

I made it past high school and suffered with depression my whole life finding what friends I made of little help. I learned in psychology that the abusers find the abused and that many of us accept abuse as we think it to be normal. I was twenty nine when I walked away from the abusive people in my life, and I still have trouble making friends often due to my condition. I take medication, and I live with my problem but there is little hope of recovery.

The one great silver lining to my condition is that I can relate to my clients as I work with the homeless population of Los Angeles. Many of them lived a life as sad or worse than my own. They find in me a listening ear and accepting mind a comfort.