It was the 1980′s, I was just 22, wrapped in a coat the boyfriend had given me. I was lying on the floor of my closet. I was cried out. I was solutioned out. I was shocked – stunned – and self-helped out. I still could not keep food down nor could I get warm. I could never get warm.

Lying there was the closest to any kind of comfort I could find.

For months, months, I remember walking to work, walking home – letting the dog out then drawing a bath, hoping I could warm up. Knowing it wouldn’t work. Hoping I could eat but not really caring. In bed by 6 pm.

I’ve spent the better part of my life, like most people, shaking my head at even the slightest mention of suicide. It touched my family, way too close, and I’m willing to bet most people know someone who has attempted or successfully carried out a suicide. As a matter of fact, I think most of us have entertained, if only for 1/100th of a second, it ourselves.

We all landed where we did. We may have been drop-kicked or gently placed, but we’re where we are supposed to be.

With all due respect and gratitude to my therapist and all the other magic makers world-wide, quite simply, I am often at the mercy of my blindness; my ability to overlook the completely obvious. I don’t need anyone to help me figure it out, I just need a smack upside the head.

Today is Mother’s Day. Today is also my birthday. And today is not how I expected it to look. Not at all how it was planned out. Nor were probably several before.

My mother took her own life a very long time ago. Her own demons just wouldn’t let go and so she did.

I shall age gracefully because for now at least, I’m forced to.

It’s a very good thing that I don’t have unlimited financial resources because if I did, with my if-one-is-good,-two-is-better mentality, I’d surely give Joan Rivers and Kenny Rodgers a run for their money (I’m sorry Kenny. I loved “Islands In A Stream…”).

I’m going to be 48 in less than a month. Forty Eight? Forty EIGHT?

If I had a dollar for every minute I’ve spent looking in the mirror, pulling my face up, up up and back and eyeballing my butt which is 4 inches lower on my body than it was a year ago…If I had a dollar, I’d go under the proverbial knife.

Every 18 minutes, someone takes his or her own life.

The most recent data from the CDC reports that of those, 4,360 are just kids, ages 10 – 24.

That’s an average of 12 children a day.

I personally spent the better part of my childhood and adolescence under an impossibly oppressive and ruthlessly debilitating depression. I didn’t know it at the time of course. To me, that was my “normal.”  It was my reality nearly every single moment of my young life.

I didn’t know how to articulate it. I didn’t know how to ask for help. I only knew life hurt.

Lucky for me, my father did know how to articulate it and at 16, not a moment too early, I was receiving treatment.

A wise therapist, many years ago said to me: “Well, it’s quite simple Leslie. Your picker is broken. Your antenna isn’t working.”

OK, I’ll bite.

I paid $100 to the  nice lady with the PhD then spent the next 20 + years trying to fix my damn Picker.

And here I am now, on Psych Central, asking my kindred spirits WHY, oh why do we keep choosing partners that are not healthy/not a great match/ or downright toxic…you can fill in your very own blank here…. _______________________ for us?

This question both frustrates me and makes me laugh out loud at the same time!  And though each of our answers are as unique and personal as snowflakes, I believe the answer is right in front of each of us. It’s the solution that’s the buzz kill.

Today I was at an adoption event and a lovely woman that I’ve met just a few times, turned to me, somehow recognized my emotion, though I thought I was unbelievably opaque about it, and said  “uh oh. Sloth!”

I’ve felt unusually emotional lately, even by my measure, and I just haven’t known what to write about. I often feel that if I can’t make people laugh, I’m not putting up the blog. But in a blinding ah ha moment in the cab just now, I realized this is important and I suspect very common.

Did you see  Kristen Bell on the Ellen Show ? Kristen told a story of how on her birthday, her boyfriend surprised her with a Sloth.  Yes, I mean it, a real honest to goodness Sloth (and who says celebrities are different than the rest of us?). Forget the thoughtful and slow moving creature for a moment. The real story here isn’t about the animal, unless like me, you find them kinda cute, no, it was about how often she cries. Trust me, you have to see this video to appreciate it.

It has been 13 months since I have had to crawl out of the terrifying hole that is depression. Some say a depressive “episode”…Well that was one long episode!

It was nearly 2 years worth of episode and as so many of you know, a minute feels like an hour – and hour feels like a day – a day, like a month, a month like a year. When you have depression, that is.

In my life, I’ve had 5 major episodes. And they were both different but alike at the same time.

Same ol’ Gremlins sitting on the edge of the bed as I lay beneath the covers…”You should be happy. Look at all you have. So after you do __________ then you’ll be happy. But it’s too much. You can’t do it. What’s the point anyway?” Over and over and OVER and over again I’ve had that old familiar discussion.

And then it happened. Driving back to Boston from Philly on Thanksgiving 2010. Sitting in traffic on the George Washington bridge, over the Hudson River, thinking about Scully.

I became aware of a sensation. The sensation of light..of levity…of hope. I felt that indescribable feeling; the one right before you cry? And I did. It was an amazing moment in my life. One of those moments that you will never, ever forget.

Because I have been forced into the anxious flyer category, now, while in the friendly skies, I have more epiphanies, more moments of clarity, more wine and  now, more plans about what to do with my life If I make it back down to the ground after lift off, then on up to 10,000 feet, I’ve decided to create a bucket list and my bucket will be embossed with the words “Leslie’s Why Not Bucket?

Don’t laugh or roll your eyes now…here are a few things that have have been tossed down deep in that bucket…

Here are your directives Virginia:

Halloween BOO! Next, hurry up and be way grateful while your hand is stuck up in some poor unsuspecting turkey, then on your mark, get set, GO! 12:01 am black Friday and shop, shop, shop, while you had better hark hear the angels while you deck your halls while you roast your chestnuts on the damn open fire…now, go shop the after sales for a sparkly LBD that most certainly isn’t the size 6 you had hoped to get into for the big why-is-there-nobody-for-me-to-kiss-at-midnight New Year party! …and then there is the hangover and the dreaded black eyed pea.

Got it? Good.

This morning, I opened up some boxes in my closet marked “Crafts.” Mixed in with the hot glue sticks and ribbon, was a memory. A memory of when I actually hand made holiday t-shirts and ornaments for the tree. And that was just pre-Christmas! Under the tree, each woman in my family delighted (or at least I think they did!)  in unwrapping a box holding handmade earrings and pins. Now I’m lucky to make my cards and get them in the mail.  Fine. I don’t do cards and haven’t in a couple of years.

Busted.

Grateful.

Yup, alone. You would think as outgoing and extroverted – how nice, friendly and warm I am, I would have tons of options of what to do on the big day….what to do? What to do?

I’ve spent the last year coming out of my shell. Match.com resulted in many dates that I wouldn’t trade for the world! OK, that was a full out lie. If anything, it’s been an exercise in putting a toe outside of my comfort zone.  Taking a break from the dating world at the moment.

My family? We are spreading out all over the country but our love is not. That however, does not make me enjoy my mouth watering Marie Calandar’s turkey pot pie any more.

For whatever reason, this Turkey day seems to be jumping up and down reminding me that I am all alone here. For whatever reason it makes me even more determined to not let the Turkey (depression) get me down.