Source: Bravo TV

Sometimes the power of a bad example is as powerful as a good example. I’m thinking of Kim Richards, one of the housewives on The Housewives of Beverly Hills.

My daughter got me hooked on that show when she came home from college on winter break.  There was a time – not too long ago – when that little intellectual dilettante in me would have dismissed such a show as a complete waste of time only to be watched by the mindless, vapid masses. Thankfully, I shut that little dilettante up and now I’m watching all the re-runs – thank you very much.

Watching Kim’s slow, self-destruction over this last season is good for me. I am, like Kim, am a single, somewhat middle-aged, mother whose child has grown up. We are both trying to keep our hair blonde and minimize our wrinkles. I am not going to pronounce Kim an alcoholic, but let’s just say there was a day – before I got sober 13 years ago – that I would have partied with Kim in a heartbeat.

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I don’t think about David Funchess much anymore. I watched him die on April 22, 1986 in Florida’s electric chair. He was the first Vietnam Veteran executed in the United States. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder had yet to be discovered when Funchess, a highly-decorated combat Marine, fatally stabbed a couple during a hold-up in Jacksonville in 1974.

Death Row, Florida State Prison

I was a cub reporter and was morbidly thrilled to have the opportunity to cover an execution. The little motel where I stayed in Starke, Florida was excited to see me, too, and had posted “Welcome Christine” on its roadside marquee. This story would be the crown jewel in my growing collection of clips – mostly stories of last night’s school board meeting and car wrecks. That’s how I looked at it.

On a personal level, I was hoping the execution would finally settle my doubts about the death penalty. I was brought up Catholic but having covered a few murders, I was not convinced that the death penalty was unjust. I was on the fence. I had heard of reporters who had fainted or barfed covering executions. I did not know how I would react.

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The great thing about being a journalist in south Florida is you get some really weird assignments. Couple of years ago I went alligator hunting with some wounded vets courtesy of the Wounded Warrior Project. I’ve been assigned to go scuba diving to cover damage to coral reefs. Chased oil in the bayous of Louisiana after the BP disaster. Been to more crime scenes than I can remember and lived to write about three hurricanes. I walked on death row a few times. Watched a man die in the electric chair. Even sat in the electric chair during one visit.

So, last Saturday night when I walked into the newsroom for my occasional, obligatory weekend shift and my editor said, “I’m going to rock your world, I knew it was going to be an interesting evening: “You’re going to Mar-a-Lago to interview the governor and his wife,” she said.

Mar-a-Lago is the palatial, oceanfront estate and swank club owned by Donald Trump on Palm Beach. I’ve been there a few times. Once I rode my bike to a fundraiser luncheon and waited in the valet line with the Bentley’s and Roll’s. Amused the hell out of the valets.

Anyway, I went home, put on the LBD (Little Black Dress), lipstick and my red, patent leather, pointy-toed stilettos and headed over to The Donald’s. The thing about these $500/plate galas is you realize, immediately, that rich people – the top one percent of the ten percent – really aren’t that different from you and me. They have money. Lots of money. But that’s it. They are still people – human beings. We may think they are insensitive, arrogant, self-righteous, clueless bigots but I am no longer willing to write them all off as insensitive, arrogant, self-righteous, clueless bigots. They’re people who just happen to have a lot of money. A whole lot of money.

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My meds FINALLY came in the mail. Amen. I take three meds, but I ran out of one before the refills came in the mail. Three days without one of the meds. Three days. My brain was starting to feel squishy. I had a horrible nightmare and I could feel a tsunami size headache building behind my eyes. Just a day after resuming the med I felt like my delightful self again.

Am I an idiot or what? I went to my nurse practitioner today and told her about my little refill snafu. She writes me scripts for three months worth of each of my meds. I send them to my insurance company’s pharmacy  and, voila, three months worth of meds arrive in the mail. She explained that I don’t have to wait until I am almost out of my meds to send in the refill prescriptions. I told her I knew that. She shook her head. I know. There is no excuse.

I like Pat, my nurse practitioner. I see her every three months and have been doing that for about five years, unless she changes the dosage.  Then I have to call her and visit her every week for awhile. Kind of a pain in the butt but I trust Pat with my life. She saved me, along with my therapist. You gotta trust the person writing your scripts. This is very, very important. It’s not like the kind of trust you put in the doctor who writes you a script for a Z-Pak and a couple days later that infection is gone.

I am talking about the kind of trust you put in someone to whom you have given your brain. Literally. You have to really, really trust this person because you have only one brain. We’re not talking about kidneys or eyes and ears. You lose one of those and you can still live. But you have one brain. That’s it.

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I screwed up. I am blessed to have an amazing prescription drug plan. I send in my prescriptions for $60, I get a three-month supply. Doesn’t matter which drug or how much it really costs. I pay just $60. So, why do I wait until I am nearly out of my meds to mail in the refills?

This time I waited so long that I have run out of one of my meds. Today is my third day without it. I called the prescription service and they said they sent it four days ago. Hopefully, it will come today. Still, I am going to see my nurse practitioner first thing on Monday morning.

I have never been this reckless before with my medications. I always – ALWAYS – take them as prescribed and I feel good, even great, most of the time. I’m waiting for withdrawal to kick in. Last night I had an incredibly vivid and terrible dream. I was in a building – seemed like a hotel – and it was stormed by some guys who were going from room-to-room shooting people. Everyone was trying to hide. I was under a table covered with a long tablecloth. Another woman was with me. The shooter pulled back the tablecloth and killed her but did not see me. I woke up with my mouth hanging open, feeling like I had been in such a deep sleep for so long that I could not move. And now I am feeling a little manicky. I’m not bouncing off the walls but, man, do I have some great ideas!

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Today I interviewed a woman about the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count. The annual bird count is like a massive flash mob for bird lovers. They go to their designed 15-mile diameter circle  and at a set time they count birds for 24-hours.

The nearest bird count to me is about 25 miles south of Lake Okeechobee – that big round thing in the middle of your map of Florida that has enough alligators to shoe every Floridian with two pairs of loafers and a belt. The bird count site is 20 miles from the nearest gas station. You really gotta love birds to stomp around this God-forsaken, alligator-infested 15-mile diameter circle all day counting birds.

I asked the woman to tell me about the most special bird she had ever seen at one of these annual bird counts. She paused and then said the Everglades Snail Kite. This raptor is on the endangered species list and if we gobble up any more of their habitat with condos they will become extinct. She said she cried when she heard the bird “vocalize.”

You’re probably wondering what the hell does this have to do with depression?

One word: Passion. You have to have something in your life that means so much to you that you would stomp around a God-forsaken, alligator infested 15-mile diameter circle just to hear or catch a glimpse of it. Something or someone that is so dear to you that you cannot imagine living without it. It could be your dog, making cupcakes, fishing or hearing an endangered species “vocalize.” It is your passion. It is your anchor to life.

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And so that was Christmas…

Another one over, and just one more holiday remaining in the emotional trifecta known as Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hanukkah and New Years. We’re almost there! Just a few more days and the tree comes down, the sales begin and my moods no longer zip around like a hockey puck.

Of the three, New Years is the easiest for me. Thanksgiving kicks off the season with a guilt-inspiring glutton fest. As for Christmas, there seems to be no escaping those despicably sweet diamond commercials or those damn Jingle-Bells-barking dogs. New Years is the home stretch. I am almost there. I have survived.  I have persevered. I have used all the tools given to me by my therapist and the meds prescribed by my doctor. I refuse to ring in the New Year looking like those triathletes who crawl across the finish-line at the Ironman in Hawaii.

My mental health needs a nice, relaxing New Years. I need simplicity, serenity and gratitude – not pointy hats, noisemakers, champagne and wet, drunk kisses. How will I do this? Ix-nay on the booze. Amongst the reverie it’s easy to forget that alcohol IS a depressant. I know it’s hard to believe when you’re dancing on the bar at 11:59 p.m. but trust me, alcohol IS a depressant. Think of it as guilt and regret in a liquid form. Your first thoughts in the new year should not be where you left your car, purse or underwear.

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A few days after Christmas 2002, I drove my mother to hospice. She wanted to make the decision of when to leave the home she had loved and raised her her family in for more than 30 years. Our home was not large or extravagant but every stick of furniture carried a story – heirlooms from her family’s farm or pieces she had refinished herself. She spent months working on a needlepoint cover for the piano bench and every spring she planted geraniums by the front door and tomatoes, rhubarb and flowers in the back yard.

But on the day I drove her to hospice she taught me the most valuable lesson of all. I stopped halfway down the driveway and asked if she wanted to take one last look. Dry-eyed and without emotion she said, “It’s just a roof with a bunch of stuff under it.” I was stunned. All of her possessions – the antiques, grandma’s china and her well-seasoned, cast iron roasting pot – were now just “stuff” to her.

A couple of years later, when I fell into the deepest, darkest depression I had ever known, I learned that lesson again. “Stuff is just stuff.” All the pretty things I owned and all the pretty things I thought I needed to make me happy lost their value. The priceless things in life were not things. Health and happiness were all I wanted.

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I live in Florida. I know only one person who was actually born here – my daughter. Florida is a state of transplanted northerners (and we are constantly reminded of this by the snowbirds from the New York who incessantly tell us about how things are done in New York. Enough already!)

Many of any us are holiday orphans. Our families are far away in a winter wonderland. Snow flakes. Snowmen. Snow angels. Snowball fights. As close to as we get to snow  in the sunshine state is a snow cone. Christmas in Florida is about as natural as the ridiculously plump lips of women in Boca Raton. It just ain’t right. Then there are the elderly. Widows and widowers. Nursing homes. ACLFs. We have plenty.

True, we don’t have to endure months of seasonal-affective disorder. Still, being alone in Florida during the holidays is depressing. Actually, being alone anywhere during the holidays is depressing. Christmas Eve and Christmas morning are the worst. I know. I used to volunteer to work Christmas Eve just so I wasn’t alone.

Being alone is hard enough during the rest of the but during the holidays our loneliness is shoved into our faces. Could the FCC please impose some kind of quota on those freakin’ diamond commercials? Please? Ditto on the Lexus ads with happy couples giving each other a shiny new car with hint of Lexus jingle on their cell phone? Seriously. Enough already.

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So, you want to get a holiday gift for your friend with depression. Let’s start with what NOT to buy.

PETS

Animal therapy is great. My dog dragged my butt out of the house when I was in the deepest throes of my last major depression. However, the time to become a pet owner is NOT when you are in the bottom of your black hole.  This is not the time to become a pack leader. Pets, especially dogs,  need affection, discipline and exercise. They need this from the moment they walk into their new home. Most of us in our healthiest state of mind aren’t up for that challenge.

Remember, puppies can read and they are discerning little rascals. Any leather product that says “Made in Italy” is as good as rawhide. I’ve never had a kitten but I hear they’re like having a little shredding machine. Ixnay on the et-pay.

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