You may have noticed that I didn’t post last week. I took a short break. Sometimes I just don’t feel like writing, or thinking, or doing… anything. I think we all feel that way occasionally, don’t we? We go and we go and we do and we run and we work and we think. Then one day we realize we’re just tired and we have to stop for a minute and look around to appreciate where we are at this moment. That was some of the reason I didn’t create a post last week. I was tired. It actually goes a little deeper than that if I’m honest though. “I’m tired” or “I don’t feel well” is a blanket phrase we all use from time to time. It answers the question or explains the situation without getting too deep or too intimate. It is a useful tool for those times that we need to deflect or throw up a wall without being too obvious. It keeps people at bay when we just need a moment to gather our selves and our feelings and take stock privately.

As a child I was always on the quiet side, sort of pensive. I was hyper-aware of people around me and their feelings, as well as of my own feelings. It really can be quite a burden, feeling so much all of the time. It gets exhausting. I see some of this in my daughter now, and I feel that I have passed this on to her to some degree. I see her carrying the weight of others and I understand how heavy that can be. Sometimes you feel as if you will buckle under the load and it’s all you can do to keep moving. I do believe some of this comes from just being women; we tend to take on everyone’s cares and feelings alongside our own and try to make them easier to bear. We nurture. We care for people, even at the risk of wearing ourselves down. It’s a real skill that we must learn, to remember not to take responsibility for everyone else’s feelings. Like most skills, you don’t just hear it or learn it once and that’s it. You have to put it into practice constantly and live it.

I started this blog to talk about my culture and background and mostly, that’s what I do. For the most part that involves talking about my Polish mother and my hillbilly dad and how that has formed me and who I am. I talk about traditions from both sides, funny anecdotes, and family memories. I tell you about the rich history from either side of my family tree. Something funny or sweet will happen and I write about it, sharing the story behind the moment with all of you. I think that many times, even though we may not have the same backgrounds, we share the same moments within our families. How we view it or how we get there may not be the same, but we share common stories and that sort of ties us all together. I like to think that I write something and put it out there so that you can read it and maybe understand or think of a similar story in your own life. All of my stories aren’t funny or sweet though. Some of them are a little deeper, a little harder to share. I always contemplate how much I’m willing to share publicly. I don’t want to be an over-sharer. I do think that some of the more serious stories are the hardest ones to tell; the ones that are more difficult to share are sometimes exactly the ones that need to be shared. For me yes, but also for you. Maybe my story can be of use for you somehow. Maybe just knowing that it’s another thing we have in common or have both experienced will somehow bring comfort to us both.

I wasn’t sure I would ever write about some things. I think that this blog is an organic process for me. It isn’t just about one thing, but about the whole. Who we are, how we get there, what formed us, it’s all part of the story. Part of my story is that as an adult, I realize now that my parents had their own histories. They have both dealt with things (or not dealt with things) that I couldn’t possibly understand because I didn’t live them. Although I can’t understand how it formed them, I am at least aware now that they are separate people from me and from our family. One of the things that I know now as a grown up is that my dad suffered from depression. I don’t know the how or why, of course it wasn’t anything that we would have ever talked about. I just know that it affected him deeply and that he struggled for much of the time between us that overlapped here on earth. He always seemed to drag a cloud around with him. It wasn’t obvious to everyone because as anyone who is familiar with depression knows, you find ways to mask it and to appear unaffected when it’s necessary. When you are closer to a person and live with them day in and day out though, you see that it is nearly impossible for them to wear the mask 100% of the time – at some point it will come down and you will see the battle they are fighting. As a child, I didn’t recognize what it was. As an adult, I feel empathy for what he was going through. I know that it must have been so lonely and difficult for him at times. I know this because last weekend, I needed a little time to take my own mask down. I was diagnosed with depression about six years ago myself. Although it wasn’t a surprise to me, it allowed me to recognize what I was going through, what my father had gone through, and to take control of my journey of understanding what that means for me now. I think that the phrase “my journey” is almost overused these days, but I can’t think of a better word for what this has been for me because I continue to learn so much about myself and about this condition along the way.

I’ve been called too serious. I’ve been told to live in the present and let go of the past. I’ve been told to lighten up. I’ve been told to not take things to heart so much. It’s not personal, don’t take things so personally. Look up, look forward, keep moving ahead. I try to do all those things, I really do. I wish it were that easy. What I’ve learned is that my brain isn’t wired that way and that it will never be that easy for me. It wasn’t for him either. It’s about so much more than feeling sad or down. Sometimes it’s just exhausting and you have to stop and rest. I don’t want to be this way. I don’t think he did either. When my dad was happy, he was so much fun to be around. He loved to tell jokes. When he really laughed, you could see it in his whole face. I have to believe that he would have preferred to be that lighter version of himself most of the time. Depression creeps in though, and changes who you are and how you feel and how you perceive. You ride that wave using whatever tools are available to you to get through it until the next time you feel like really laughing. My dad didn’t have a lot of tools to use. At least not ones that were healthy. I am lucky in that I have been able to seek direction and learn about ways to handle the bad days. I really do have so much love in my life too, and that makes a huge difference. I can’t stop the bad days from coming, but I am able to push through them to the other side. When I do, I sometimes look up and think “Look at me dad, I’m doing it. I’ve got this.” I think he sees me and he knows. I think that this thing that he unknowingly passed on to me will be a little better for me than it was for him and that even though not everything we get from our parents is positive, it still connects us even more.

We truly are our parents’ children. We could not go back in time with them, they could not go forward in time with us, and we cannot step into the future that will belong to our own children and grandchildren… and so it goes. What we can do is see how we are all part of each other and will always be. Yet we evolve as we go. And as Babcia says, “Life goes on.” Always.