Major Mood Disorders welcomes Margaret Schroeder as she describes her story

I’m not really sure if depression runs in the family or not, but my father’s side, his brother, has depression and I am clinically diagnosed with severe depression. Nevertheless, within my family, I’m the middle child and 32 years old. My eldest sister is about 39 and our youngest sibling is 25. She’s been living with me for about seven years throughout her university education–she’s now doing finance and marketing and something along those lines–oh well. While I helped to clear up her debt from paying rent and so on, of all the shit I did for her through her tough years in university, she decided to leave once she got married, once she had a child, once she was finished graduating. Can you believe that?

The Impact of Depression

She’s such a dear and important person to me, to see her neglect me like that reminds me of my husband who spontaneously left me. We had such a great relationship, we didn’t have any kids thankfully or else our separation would’ve made life even more complicated for me. Nadeen has a child now, she’s been married for two years and has been living on her own. When her husband is at work, she doesn’t even come by with her child. They only live 25 minutes away, does that make sense to you? After all that I’ve done for her, she refuses to keep a relationship going for reasons that I don’t even understand, I don’t even know myself. She’s told me that she always wanted to become something with significance, something that garnered strong relationships. I haven’t been able to understand the cause of my depression, but I believe that situations with Nadeen really amplify it.

How Depression Affects Family

To make it worse, my eldest sister just wants to prove to me that she’s better than me, she wants to prove it in every moment. We play card games together and she has to win, I don’t get it but I let her win most of the time. I try to make dinner and she insists that she must teach me how to do it properly. My mother always behaves like she worships her, don’t really know why that is either. Somehow I feel like this family really causes my depression. These moments with my elder sister seem to be getting worse, I feel like I just can’t keep up with what she wants of me, that she needs me to feel lower in her presence. I could just beat her up but I don’t want to, it’s not going to solve anything.

Lately, I haven’t been sleeping well either, my mind might be amplifying my feelings of depression too since it never rests. My nightmares are about these situations too, for example, walking through a rose-filled garden with instead of petals, metal shards and it’s very futile–probably relates to my annoying sister who keeps ignoring me, walking through her family might be like walking through this field. Oh well, any thoughts everyone?