AM I BLUE

Am I Blue … Women and Depression
A personal journey

By Leslie Lafayette


We get them coming, and we get them going.
We get them as teenagers, when an innocent look can spin our world out of control, a careless remark break a fragile heart.
We get them, some of us, every month of our lives in the form of pre-menstrual syndrome. The kind of grinding, mind-numbing despair that lays us low, shuts us down and tears us to pieces.
In a particularly ironic blow, we get them, many of us, after completing a nine-month journey and producing a new life.
We get them in perimenopause.
We get them in menopause.
We get them in old age.
We get them with new jobs or old relationships, with the burdens of childrearing and caregiving and social butterflying. With every pound on the scale, with every glance in the mirror.
We get the blues.
Women seem particularly prone to this personal eclipse, this thief of joy and peace of mind. And the question becomes one not of Why the blues, but How. How to cope. How to endure. Ultimately, how to triumph.
Because women do triumph over the blues.
My first memory of that stomach-in-the-falling-elevator feeling, that Big Empty that lives inside of us all, is myself sitting in the backseat of my parents’ Oldsmobile. I am twelve years old and something from Jimmy Dorsey is playing on the radio. It’s melancholy, and what twelve year old knows from melancholy? Yet I do. I know it in that moment, that sadness without a reason, without a face, without a purpose.
I wouldn’t have known what to say to my parents. “Help me, I’m lost,” comes to mind now, but then, I just felt small and alone despite the presence of the two most important adults in my world just inches away from me, and the Santa Monica sand shimmering next to the bluest of waters.
After years of battling what are now called “mood disorders,” ranging from mild bouts of tears to occasional intractable dark moods … panic disorder to a sort of loss of appetite for life (Woody Allen, who battled his depression demons for years, nearly named the movie “Annie Hall” after this condition, called anhedonia, a lack of gusto or enjoyment, a sort of emotional limbo) …and enough ups and downs to rival any elevator… I can honestly say that this time of my life, past menopause, is reminiscent of the first eleven years of my life, those childhood days when I was less aware of myself than of the world around me … and therefore I have to grudgingly admit that this is also – if not the happiest time of my life, certainly the least unhappy.
(A disclaimer here: I am Russian and Hungarian, and I would find it genetically impossible to brag about my cheerful disposition under any circumstances.)
The chicken-and-egg battle in the world of depression is about physical depression (researchers say chemical imbalances, particularly low levels of serotonin in the brain, cause depressed feelings) versus situational blues (the marriage is no good, the mortgage is too high, the first born is into drugs, the shoe doesn’t fit so you can’t wear it…the list goes on ad infinitum.)

The argument that we don’t see things the way they are, we see them the way we are, still doesn’t answer the question, does it. If our brains are not producing the “feel good” chemicals, we are bound to see the world through a glass darkly, and that glass is likely to be half empty. So for some of us women, anti-depressant medications have truly made all the difference in quality of life. For others, hormonal therapies in peri-menopause and menopause itself are the answer to our prayers.

And then there are those of us who somehow muddled through and went to sleep at night covered not with a down quilt but a dozen self-help books; who asked themselves the same questions over and over (what does all this mean? Why aren’t I happy? What is to become of me?) but didn’t get the answers; who cried the tears and lost their way again and again but eventually triumphed over this most perplexing and debilitating of all life ailments – this godawful depression – by changing the way they thought…by giving less credence to the feelings of the moment and practicing a different way of being in the world. We stopped romanticizing depression and looked at it straight on and saw it for what it was: a destroyer of precious moments, one after another, moments that add up to lifetimes.

What did I learn from a lifetime of battling the blues?

I learned that “taking actions against a sea of troubles,” as Hamlet suggests in his famous soliloquy, really does work. Except sometimes, doing nothing is the better choice; if one doesn’t work, try the other.

I learned that there is no way to fill up “the Big Empty,” that place inside where you feel all alone. You have to live around it and with it, and in spite of it, and because of it. You can’t drink enough milkshakes or martinis. You can’t take enough drugs or love enough men or buy enough cashmere sweaters or play enough slot machines to fill up that space. It is part of you and part of every human being who ever lived, so make peace with it as early as you can.

Billie Holiday sang “Good morning, heartache, pull up a chair,” and I learned to welcome the pain of loss and heartache into my living room because it wasn’t going anywhere soon, so it might as well make itself at home. Funny, but it was easier that way.

I learned not to take myself so seriously. What was bothering me five years ago? I can’t remember. I will feel the same five years from today. I learned to “save the drama for my mama,” because nobody else was particularly interested, and I saved a lot of energy that way.

I learned to stop chewing on things, like a Rottweiler with a hambone. When I was younger I felt if I could only “think through” a situation in my life that was getting me down, I could “fix” it. Instead, I changed my thoughts, distracted myself, put on a funny movie, went out the door, weeded the garden, walked the dog. It wasn’t easy; in fact, it was the hardest thing I ever did.

I (mostly) learned to stop calling friends and dumping all over them unless I absolutely couldn’t help myself. This saved phone bills and friendships and gave me a break from my own thoughts.


Memories of the way we were might make for great song lyrics, but it doesn’t make for a great way to live. I learned that wandering through the past is walking a dangerous path. For one thing, it was never quite the way I think it was. For another, it is there and gone, and I am here and now. And if I want to keep living, that is where I intend to stay.

Most of all, living long enough has taught me that Scarlett was right. Tomorrow really is another day. It doesn’t mean my sorrows and losses will be gone. It just means I have another chance to eke out some moments of peace, laughter, contentment. Some days they come easier than others. Life bestows on us a river of gold every day, but it’s up to us to wade in and mine the good stuff , to keep it, marvel and reflect upon it, for every new day we’re given.


(Depression can be a serious, life-threatening disorder. If you need help, seek it out immediately. If you feel you are in danger of doing anything to harm yourself or others, go immediately to the nearest emergency room or call Suicide Prevention. There is always someone who will help you. Reach for that help.)