I hope you will allow me to give you some advice. If it doesn’t apply to you, no harm done.
I have two daughters. My first one graduated from high school (2001) and went hopping and skipping to college. She had one crying jag; as her daddy was saying goodbye to her at college, she fell into his arms and sobbed, “I’m so scared.” But after that, she leaped into college life, had a great three and a half years (graduated early) and landed a great job.
She’s always been that way. When she was five, I took her to day camp, and during the drive, she bounced up and down in the seat and said, “I can’t wait. I love to go to new places and meet new people!”
And then there’s my other daughter.
She loved high school so much and had a million friends. She went away to college apprehensive and gloomy and stayed that way for a year and a half. We kept telling her all the usual advice: “Join some clubs. Go to church. Get involved. Volunteer. etc.”
But she was miserable. Whenever she called us, she tried to sound upbeat and positive. But she would call her boyfriend and cry for an hour. She never told us this. He told us later, after…
One night while my husband was teaching RCIA, I got a call from my daughter.
She had taken part in one of the graduate student’s psychology projects (a good way to earn extra credit in college–usually it involves taking a quiz). The next day she received a call from the psychology department asking her to stop by. They told her the quiz results showed that she was dangerously depressed. They recommended immediate psychiatric and psychological intervention.
I called my husband out of RCIA and we talked to her for several hours.
I actually wasn’t shocked. My husband suffers from clinical depression, and is currently on meds. Several people on both sides of the family have suffered from clinical depression, OC disorder, and even psychosis requiring institutionizing.
Why didn’t we notice?!!! We’re a talking family, and we have good relationships with our daughters.
I think it’s because we all thought she was just going through the usual “growing up.”
Thank goodness the college cared enough to step in. Clinical depression is a dangerous physiological condition, and the biggest danger is suicide.
Just like my older daughter has always been outgoing and optimistic, my younger daughter has always been introspective and wary of change. Once when she was about a year old, I switched some pictures around in her bedroom. When she walked into the room (she walked early), she started screaming, ran out of the room, and refused to go back in until I changed the pictures back.
Thank God our daughter started counselling immediately, got on an AD, and today is healthy, happy, making friends, enjoying life. She still has symptoms of depression, but she is getting help and getting better. It’s so important to KNOW what’s wrong, not just try to pretend nothing’s wrong.
When she came home from college that summer, she showed us a diary that she had kept when she was in 2nd and 3rd grade. If we had known that she was keeping that diary, we probably would have intervened much earlier. The entries were shocking–she was terrified of guns, being shot, having someone breaking into our house and shooting her or her family.
She made entries about a “war” movie that her class had watched. Apparently she started crying and had to leave the room during the movie. She thinks that the movie probably started everything up. She didn’t sleep for several nights, and we took her to a psychologist who helped her to learn to calm herself down enough to go to sleep.
A few years before her high school graduation, our family was kicked out of our Protestant church. She had always hated that church, and when we came home and told her about the “tribunal” and our “ousting,” she started screaming, "I told you! That church is evil! Why didn’t you listen to me? We should have left years ago!!!’’
It was chilling. Why DIDN’T we listen to her?
We had all the warning signs all through her childhood that she was at risk for clinical depression. But as parents, we were blind. We assumed her gloom about college was “normal.”
Thank GOD someone else listened and stepped in. Thank you, St. Louis University!
So here’s my advice to you. If your “growing up” seems to be taking longer than everyone else’s and you are suffering, please see your doctor and ask about the possibility of clinical depression. For your parents’ sake. For your friends’ sake. Everyone wants to keep you around! Everyone wants you to have a happy life.
If this doesn’t apply to you, maybe it will apply to someone else that you meet.
I really needed to read that.