The Great Depression

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• January 10, 2016

Growing up, my Father was a stern, stubborn, self confident man feared by the kids in my neighborhood despite the fact that he only stands at 5’7 (and a half, if you ask him) feet tall.  He always had a reputation of the type of Dad who could fix anything, always willing to lend a hand, and very quick with jokes, often the funniest person in the room.

He carried himself in that old school Italian fashion… he was not to be fucked with.  I was afraid of him too.  My mom was the soft one.  You did not want to get in trouble with my Dad.  Most of the time he was jovial, but I remember when one of my friends dinged his car with a bike handle and I cried for two hours, thinking my life was over.  This guy would rip your head off if you spilled something on the carpet.  If I dated in high school (which I really didn’t because I was such a late bloomer), my Dad would intimidate the hell out of any guy who tried to touch me.  My Dad told a prom date that if he even thought about doing anything to me, he would kill his entire family.  No one knew if he was kidding or not.  I’m still not sure.

Sure, we butt heads every once in a while, as all kids do with their parents, but I’ve never been like all kids, so our relationship was always strong.  This is not to say I never got in trouble, or I wasn’t scared of him when he lost his temper and yelled.  My Dad has always been a big kid.  He loved playing with us.  He made everything fun.  He is also competitive as hell, so he never let us simply win because we were kids.  Oh no, if he won, he would gloat.  He built parts of our home, literally, with his own two hands.  He was the captain of our boat.  The bread winner.  He was the fucking man of the house.  Family and God have always been everything to him (aka: an Italian man born and raised in New York).

This is about the worst depression I’ve ever seen: when my Dad fell into darkness for years and I thought he was never coming back.

When I was about seventeen, I experienced my first taste of depression.  I had always been an introspective kid, and I’ve had anxiety attacks since the first grade, but I had never been depressed.  Quite the opposite.  I was a super happy and positive kid.  If you ask anyone who knew me growing up, they’ll tell you I was always smiling and laughing at something.

Of course, it’s not uncommon for a teenager to turn their back on the world.  My depression as an adolescent was a product of insomnia, my guilt because of my lack of faith, and not being able to deal with the unfairness of life and the cruelty and dishonesty of adults.  I alienated myself from most of my friends, and I told my parents it was because they were smoking pot and I wasn’t into it.  That was never the issue.  But I needed some sort of an excuse for sitting in my room doing nothing when my friends were all hanging out.  I couldn’t get a grip on the dark places my mind took me to, and the sadness I felt everyday.  I didn’t tell anyone.  I white knuckled it.  I would fight it, and I would fight it alone. There was so much I didn’t understand about depression, happiness, and mental illness.  I mean, I was a kid, and I thought I knew it all.  It passed, as it always does.  I was always drawn to darkness and fascinated my morbidity, but I never knew I could be like that.  I never knew that within myself, darkness can take over all the light and leave you feeling so small, hopeless, and insignificant.

Hold on… didn’t I just say this was about my Dad’s depression?  Yes.  But this is important because this affected how I dealt with other people having depression.  When I came out of that tiny depression, I felt empowered.  I was happy again, and I felt like I had a deeper understanding of my psyche (and others).  Because I had pulled myself out of a mild depression, I considered myself an expert.  Like the chicken pox, I thought it a one time thing.  Perhaps I knew, even then, it would return and it would be worse, but I was delusional and confident that it wouldn’t.  If it did, I would be prepared.  I felt emotionally strong, and I also felt that anyone could kick the depression bug as easily as I did.  However, I was sorely unprepared for what was to happen in my life next: my Dad’s years long depression.

In retrospect, my Dad’s mental health decline was slow.  So slow, we ignored all the warning signs.  His job, which he had for over 25 years (just a few years away from retirement) became a stressful chore, which he dreaded.  His three kids, all in their teen years, were… well… teenagers.  My brother and I not only denounced our faith, but outwardly spoke out against religion, and the utter nonsense and hypocrisy of the church.  My sister was like any stereotypical teenage girl from hell depicted in movies and television.  My brother had a quick temper, and often fought with my Dad (sometimes, physically).  We had such a happy upbringing.  Our childhood was more than ideal, it was amazing.  Suddenly, that was unraveling.

He first lost his sense of humor.  My Dad is known for his sense of humor.  He’s the type of guy who purposely puts a huge piece of food in his teeth at a party and goes around talking to people, smiling, waiting to see who’s going to point it out.  Anywhere you were, he is quick with a sarcastic comment.  Though deeply religious, he wouldn’t hesitate to make an off-color joke at church.  This is who he is, and why he’s beloved.  When he stopped making us laugh, that should have been the first red flag. But we chalked it up to a mid-life crisis.

His OCD worsened at this time, and he became animate and stubborn about some trivial things.  His temper was often triggered by my brother’s negligence towards our Dad’s OCD.  My father and brother butt heads a lot back then.  This is mostly because Mitch was dealing with his own demons, and he was truly an asshole for a couple years, as many testosterone young males are.  My sister mostly butt heads with my Mom.  I didn’t really butt heads with anyone (except myself).

In the beginning, it wasn’t so hard to tolerate.  I guess we all figured Dad would return to normal in a couple months.  I tried being around for dinner, since eating at the table with his family was basically his favorite thing.  But after six months, he got worse, and he was such a drag to be around.  Constantly worry about his job, and his mother with worsening Alzheimer’s, he was, well, depressing to be around.  So I spent more time with my friends.  Smoked a lot of pot.

My Dad, once upon a time: Feared.  Confident.  Strong.  Funny.  All that was gone.  As the depression dripped, dripped, dripped in… it was like the twilight zone coming home to finding my Dad in the fetal position, curled on the floor in the living room.  Where was the guy who constantly made us laugh?  Where was the guy who risked his life to save his boat?  Where was the daredevil water skier I so greatly admired?  I was confused, and angry.  And I handled it like an asshole.  I ignored it.  I said, “snap out of it.”  If I could conquer a mild teenaged low, anyone could get over a depression.  “Snap out of it,” is literally the worst and dumbest thing you could possibly say to a depressed person.  You’re suggesting that they don’t want to come out of it.  Trust me, there’s nothing they want more.

I spent as much time away as I could.  Drinking and smoking pot.  I could punch myself.  Forgiveness is something I’d never have to ask of my Father, because he never did or will blame me for not knowing how to handle that situation.  But I should have been less selfish.  And I’m not sure I ever did forgive myself for that.  I was angry with him.  When you’re a kid, your parents are gods in your eyes.  I mean, they literally created you.  I think I was really scared that he was always going to be that way.  I was also scared that I would eventually go through that too, and I was ashamed to make his depression about me.  And then there was the frustration of not knowing how to help.  I was the family mediator.  When shit hit the fan, I delegated both sides, especially when things got bad with my brother.  I would listen, and help divided sides come to an understanding.  But I didn’t know how to fix my Dad.  So I turned my back.  I turned my back, like a fucking idiot.  The worst thing you could do.

I was going Suffolk Community College and since I was smart, I was pretty pissed about going there at first.  And I was getting increasingly irritated with my Dad for not being him.  The Dad I knew would tell the man he became to man the fuck up.  He spent his time pacing the house, and rubbing things, like the table cloth on the dining room table.  The type of behavior I’d come to know well with the nursing home patients who lost their minds.  His thoughts consumed him.  His face was uncertain, and his eyes showed a broken man.  Before all this, I had only seen my Dad cry once.  It was during an X-Men movie when Jean Grey died, because my Dad was in love with Jean Grey.  Now, he looked like he was going to cry all the time.  This made me furious.  I was so fucking mad.  So mad at him for being a pussy.  But really, so mad at myself for not knowing how to fix him.

Years later, I learned that depression runs in the family, and his grandmother was suicidal.  You could say it was his job he hated, his family not turning out the way he planned, getting older and realizing he’s closer to the end than the beginning, or a chemical imbalance.  None of these answers are wrong, and not one solely correct either.

He turned to his God, and I became more angry at his God for abandoning him (which was ironic, since that’s exactly what I did).  I fucking hated religion back then.  Every time I saw a church, rage filled me up.  The dark side was running through my veins.  He didn’t want to do anything.   Family and friends started to notice too.

Being a man of faith, my Dad would never kill himself.  This is one of the worst sins.  Suicide is a one way ticket to Hell, and you’re never forgiven.  Despite being something he’d never do, he said there were days he felt like ending it.  Back then, I saw suicide as sheer cowardice.  Fast forward to years later, where I would not only empathize with people who killed themselves, but wondered why more people didn’t do it.  Fast forward to lows where depression became so unbearable, I wanted to end it.  And for those, like my former self, who cannot fathom suicide, I would say, consider yourself lucky, to have never experienced such inner darkness.

Years.  My Dad was in the depression for years.  I gave up on him.  I thought he was never coming back.  I fucking gave up on him.  I said I wouldn’t be mad if my Mom left him.  Oh my God, I was a piece of shit.  My Mom, is a fucking saint, by the way.  I mean, she was really the one who had to deal with it the most.  But my Mother, despite having a strange and borderline abusive childhood, is one of the most optimistic people I know.  And to her credit, she never gave up on him.  He drove her crazy from time to time, sure,  and she would go out with her girlfriends sometimes, but she stayed in most nights with him.  For years.  Not weeks.  Not months.  Years.  She would never leave him.  It’s strange that I’m so opposed to marriage, having come from parents who have one of the strongest marriages I’ve ever seen.  I know I would have left him (and I feel tremendously guilty about this).  Truthfully, I don’t know too many people who would have stuck it out.  A midlife crisis is one thing.  This was different.  This was darker.  This was longer.  And it affected all of us.

My sister and I weren’t so close in these years.  Our conversations would go something like this:

“Dad is so fucking depressing.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean is he going to therapy or taking meds?”
“I think Mom made him go.”
“He really needs to chill out.”
“Yeah.”

My brother and I were closer, but our conversations were similar.  Usually, we talked it over while stoned.  It was a topic we didn’t like discussing, because there was no solution, and it was painful.  Every one noticed.  Our cousins, our friends.  My Dad, once the comedian of the family, now turned into an unsure mess.

“Is your Dad okay?”  They would ask.

That was a loaded question.  No, he wasn’t.  That was for damn sure.  But I didn’t know why.  And I didn’t know how to fix it.  None of us did.

In college, I got my second depression, which wasn’t nearly as bad as my Dad’s but it was a wake up call for me.  Because I knew then, for sure, that whatever was happening to my Dad was going to happen to me.  Forever.  It’s hereditary.  But I also knew that I wouldn’t last a year in that state.  Fuck, I don’t think I’d last two months.  It was shortly after this realization I started doing stand-up comedy.

Just as slowly as my Dad eased into the depression, he eased out.  He started being sarcastic again.  It wasn’t frequent, but every so often, he’d make a joke, and that was… well… it was a light.  It was a light at the end of a very dark place he’d been in.  And we’d laugh so hard at his jokes.  Yes, because they were funny, but also because the his comic relief was just that… relief.  My Mom said, “I told you so, I told you he’d come back.”  Drip by drip, day by day, he got better.  He smiled.  He laughed.  He was decisive.  He was coming back!  His return took probably a year, but he wasn’t the same person at all.  He was different.  He was so much better than he was before.  He was more sensitive, and understanding.  More open.  More loving.  Just happier all around.

The metamorphosis was as astounding as it was relieving.  And every one noticed.  “Your Dad seems better,” they’d say.

“Yeah,” I’d smile, “he is.  He’s much better.”

While I would never wish the darkness upon anyone, especially my Dad, he really became his best self after the great depression (for as long as I’ve known him, anyway).  He’s happier, and more relaxed.  He lets life come at him, and like a surfer he rides the waves (actually, he’s a pretty bad surfer, but he surfs life better than he surfs waves).  He is an absolute pleasure to be around.

I think it lasted as long as it did because he tried to white knuckle it.  Because he didn’t want to be a burden.  Because he was the backbone of our family.  Because, being an alpha male Italian Roman Catholic, he repressed so much for far too long.  And because, while he provided for his family, his job never offered a sense fulfillment.  He didn’t want to be weak, but truth is, I’ve yet to meet anyone who struggled so long and hard through something so emotionally taxing as what he went through.  That’s not weakness.  Anyone who thinks so is so sorely mistaken.  Just as I did when I was a little girl, I still see my Dad as a hero, standing tall, at 5’7, with his cape blowing in the wind.

My Dad and I monkeying around.  A comedian, and his daughter.