depression

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“A FEW years ago, I awoke at 2:30 a.m. to more than a “rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” It was a full-force pounding of a body trying to break into my little house in Washington, D.C. It was the sound and scenario that, as a single woman living alone, I feared more than spiders in the house.

Because I was writing political speeches at the time, my BlackBerry slept on the pillow beside me. I grabbed it and looked out my bedroom window at the stoop below. There he was: tall, dark clothes, big. He backed up and then raced to the door, pounding his body against it. Then he kicked at it the way actors take boots to the heads of bad guys in the movies.”

A rather disturbing op-ed in the NY Timesfrom someone that has been a speech writer for Democratic Senators John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John Kerry, and for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino where she says that as a result of a home break in Washington DC, she almost bought a gun for self-defense.  After all, being a single woman, alone, a lady no taller than TMEW, she faced the situation of having to face off (with a large dog by her side) against a male big and strong enough to be breaking down her door.  It was problably only because the local police station was right around the corner, according to her own words, that he never gained access.

And then, stopped the process of obtaining that self-defense weapon in fear for her life as she suffers from depression; she goes on to describe what it is like.  I can, to a degree, understand what she goes through, not from personal experience but from the experience of having to care for for family members that suffer from depression as well.  A lot of traveling back and forth to go to check in on them, making sure they have the right meds, ensuring that they are TAKING the right meds the right way, and making sure that the thought of “hey, I don’t have to take these anymore – I feel FINE now!” is dealt, for them, with as a temporary illusion (and for them, it was temporary as both they and I found out the hard way).  It is a disease and it is a really disabling disease in its worst forms not only to them but to those around them as well.  Having this as a single living-alone woman, well, not easy.  So while I applaud her decision of not purchasing a gun for her own safety, I disagree with but completely disagree with her plea to keep from hurting herself:

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