Last summer, my mom was diagnosed with depression and it was really bad. It was because she has brain cancer, so she was taking anti-seizure meds and a side effect of those was depression
She’d have really bad mood swings and she’d be really indifferent to me and my sister, which was really hard for both of us. She would just lash out at us and be really unreasonable. We had to remember that it wasn’t her, it was the depression that was doing it, but that was really hard. I had to go live with my grandparents for a little while because I couldn’t really handle staying at home with my mom.
I think my mom is embarrassed about it. She never addressed her depression in front of me. She even denied it sometimes in front of me and my sister. She said she wasn’t depressed. She didn’t want to see a therapist. It was something my dad had to make her do. Still to this day, we never talk about it. We didn’t talk about what happened over the summer when she was depressed and how I moved out. Yeah, I think she feels that she can’t talk about it.
My mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was in 8th grade, but she relapsed last year. Mrs. Morrison was always there for me and she was great. She was there any time I wanted to talk with her. When I got back from winter break, I went and talked with her for a whole hour and she was very understanding. She was just there to listen.
Last year, it was a really big stressor. I guess all of high school it has been a really big stressor because even though she was in remission, we always knew that it could come back and everything. There was always that thing hanging over our heads. You could be fine one day and be happy and I could be hanging out with my friends, and I would remember and get really stressed out.
