Public Service Announcement: Please Don't Be Offended, But It's Possible I Don't Remember You

CUBS WIN!!! I have never felt more NOT in Chicago than I did when I watched Game 7 last night from the comfort of my living room in Nashville. I heard an announcer refer to the Windy City, and I thought, "Hey now! That reminds me of something..."!

If you know me personally, you may have noticed that you haven’t heard from me since last year (as far as I know). According to my husband (let's call him "Greg," because his name is Greg), the last thing that happened, communication-wise, is that "we" sent out a holiday newsletter. I've previously documented my fascination with holiday newsletters.

Last December, I couldn't pull it off. I felt really guilty about not sending cards, but I was too depressed to peal myself off the sofa.

Greg said, "Don’t worry about it! Stay right there with your Ho Ho’s. I’ll take care of it."

"Phew," thought I. One less thing to worry about. Back to watching MSNBC loop the same non-news 24 hours a day.

For some reason, it came up recently that Greg had sent a holiday letter (by email) to our friends and family. I didn't remember it.

"You sent Christmas cards?"

"Yep!" He was so proud.

"Cool! Thanks! What’d ya write?"

He led me up to the office and read his masterpiece aloud.

My response: "YOU DID NOT REALLY SEND THAT!"

He was crestfallen. "What? It’s fine. Your friends love you. You got lots of calls and texts and emails after I sent it."

"JESUS! Of course they felt like they had to say SOMETHING. That sounds like a Holiday Suicide Note! And there are typos! I'm mortified!"

Unfortunately for everyone, Greg painted an accurate picture of our newly-wedded bliss:

Merry Christmas to You and our Loved Ones

Thank you again for being such a big part of our wedding! I enjoyed meeting you and learning even more reasons to love Julie. She was elated to have you participate in our wedding and was SO happy to see you. Jules loves your Christmas card! She was looking forward to sending pictures and mailing cards this year, but was too overwhelmed by the task, and is disappointed that she has not been able to do it. For now, we’ve attached some photos of our special day.

It has been a roller coaster year for us from wedding planning, the wedding weekend, relaxing in the sun, and establishing our life together. Through all of it Jules has been struggling to stay strong in the face of increasingly debilitating depression and anxiety. You are aware of the challenges that Jules has dealt with for years, and this year has been rough. We are working together to find new avenues to help her and are very hopeful about a relatively new treatment that Jules will start at Vanderbilt in January. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a procedure that stimulates specific regions of the brain though daily treatments over the course of six weeks. TMS has proven to be very successful in helping individuals with treatment resistant depression, but one thing she needs most is support from the people who love her.

The first thing Jules wanted to do after the wedding was make plans to visit friends and family, but despite expectations, she has not left Nashville since the wedding except for a trip to Naperville in September to see her mom in the hospital. Jules misses everyone so much, and she’d love to visit or even call to catch up. Due to her anxiety and depression, she is discouraged and afraid, worried that an otherwise joyful conversation will degrade into her crying.

She wants you to know that she thinks of you often, and hopes to see you soon. Jules swears that with the help of TMS, she will be sending out “Happy New Year!” cards with a MUCH LONGER holiday letter (maybe in March or April). Wishing all of you the best for the holidays and the new year.

With Sincere Love,
Greg & Jules


First thing's first: Shout out to my incredibly patient, preternaturally upbeat husband. And more, I give Greg credit for NOT doing the thing where you try to make it sound like you've not so much as stubbed your toe the whole live long year. In spite of how nicely your life is going, it's common courtesy to try NOT to be a big douche in your holiday cards. But Greg failed miserably on another note: Please also do others the holiday kindness of not sending a letter that is cringe-inducing. Greg's letter was sincere. That's what bothered me most about it. Sincerity seems foreign when you've spent decades trying to hide your illness by making light of it.

I did go to TMS for a month (or two?), but nothing changed. We were given one last option, the magic bullet: Electroconvulsive therapy. There was going to be some short-term memory loss, and that was the reason I'd declined ECT when a doctor first proposed it to me a decade earlier. This time there seemed like nothing left to lose, so we went for it. Greg carted me to and from Vanderbilt Hospital where I got knocked out and electroshocked via head 2-3x a week for a few months.

RESULT #1: It worked. I’m cured! After struggling with depression for 25 years, I am alive and able to feel things! This is a VERY BIG DEAL to me, and I am super grateful for it.

RESULT #2: I have amnesia.

You may be accustomed to taking everything I say with a boat-load of sea salt. But, my friends, this is no lie.

At the same moment that I woke up one day in May to realize with absolute CERTAINTY that I really was entirely cured of a lifetime of debilitating, devastating, unrelenting, treatment-resistant depression, I also realized that I didn't know where the fuck I was. I walked into another room to see a fella sitting on a sofa.

"Happy anniversary!," he said.

I said, "Who are you?"

(OK. I didn't say THAT. What I really said was, "I feel great! I really do! It’s gone! I feel normal!" But at the same time, I was thinking, "Who's this guy?")

He hugged me and told me I was safe. I had a sense that I DID know him and that I WAS safe, but the only thing in the room that I recognized was a giant bookcase that I bought in 1999.

He told me to sit on the sofa, but I was confused. “Where are we?”

"Nashville."

"Nashville?"

"You're home."

"I live in Nashville?"

"You've lived here for two years. You painted every room in the house."

"I like the colors. These are colors I would pick."

He laughed, led me to sit down, and he handed me a photobook that he'd made for me as a one-year anniversary gift. He put it in my hands and walked me through the pictures, telling me about our wedding. I was sitting next to a man who I did not remember meeting or dating or marrying. As it turns out, there was a whole thing... a white dress, my beautiful friends, an obscenely ugly cake, dancing, a ring bearer, and all. If you were there, maybe you could tell me about it.

Though I didn't really know him, something in me knew that I loved him. He told me that he'd told me all of this before. Apparently, he's gone through the whole routine half a dozen times. He’ll have to get his own blog if he wants to emote about buyer’s remorse, cuz good GOD, I took "the first year of marriage is hard" to extremes.

What happened to me is not typical. The doctors don't even warn you about the possibility of severe long-term memory loss. My doctors had never seen it happen before. But I wouldn't change a thing. I'm not depressed, and for a brief period of time, I didn't know who the Kardashians were, so, you know, pros and cons. The past 5+ years have been wiped out for good, and when I make new memories, they last about 4-6 weeks, so I keep forgetting and then RE-learning about those Kardashians. They're EVERYWHERE!

Obviously there's more. Maybe I’ll tell you about it in the "2016 (I Don’t Remember You, But Your Address is in My iPhone) Holiday Letter."

--
P.S. I can only remember, sort of, my first 1-2 boyfriends, so the rest of you are off the hook... for now.