I am sitting here shaking and crying.I just got off the phone with my best friend who is seriously depressed.She has just entered a day program at a local psychiatric hospital and hates it. What I won't tell her is that for people like her there are few options and the best the hospital can hope for
is either the depressive episode passes and or the drugs start to kick in. My late husband was in one of these programs years ago. He killed himself over a year ago. He was bi polar but in the end that wasn't what caused himself to take his own life. He just couldn't face the demons caused by a pretty crazy narcissistic mother and other unresolved childhood wounds. Similiar demons are swirling around my un named best friend. Demons that have been held at bay for over 30 years by her fundamental religious beliefs.
When I met her years ago she was a Democrat and liberal. Not that I paid any attention to politics back then. We were kindred spirits. A lot of sex drugs and rock and roll.For both of us.But while my sexual adventures were one flavor, hers came in many flavors. Sometime during this period,I saw her depression for the first time.I remember going there and feeding her and driving her to her regular Dr. Who told me that she was destined for a life of many depressive episodes like this. Then Jesus came into her life and she was saved. I'm not being a smart ass..She really was. Her life was transformed and the depressions stopped. It was around this time that she moved to North Carolina and started voting Republican.She got married to an ex con and i couldn't make her wedding.She flew back here and was at my wedding in 1979.Sometime in the mid 80s she got divorced and moved back here. She joined a fundie church here and left it because they wouldn't let anyone with aids workshop there. She didn't like that so she left. About 10 years ago she had another depressive episode that we thought was due to menopause. And of course she was always there for me during my late husbands mania and depressions.She was always there for me.And for my daughter .
Somewhere around 8 years ago she left the Church and became Jewish.Joined a synagogue got mitvahed at age 50.But she believes that Jesus is the messiah which is contrary to most Jews.I don't care who or how she sees God. The problem is that she's now in a Jewish graduate school and says the reason shes depressed is because she has lost faith in Jesus and isn't praying enough. Thats when I lost it with her. On my cell phone in a Burger King on the NJ Turnpike. I'm yelling at her that her religion or religions are fucking nuts and so are her crack pot Republican politics.
I spent the week end in a spiritual workshop. I cannot go down this path with her. And I told her so tonight.