depression

joanna bujes joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com
Fri Apr 12 12:17:58 PDT 2002


At 01:32 PM 04/12/2002 -0400, Marco wrote:
>First, why is the public/work face the last to deteriorate, while the one
>shown to one's loved ones is the first? Do we tend to self-identify as an
>economic consumer/producer?

Speaking from experience: after the birth of my daughter I became very ill, received substandard/harmful medical treatment, and devolved into a state of semi-permanent anxiety/panic ... all this while I was working full time to support my family, raising two kids (including the baby that kept me up all night), and being in fairly excruciating physical pain though all my waking hours. This lasted two years.

During this period, I felt that I had no choice but to continue to "perform" at work, because, without my paycheck we would have wound up on the streets or being dependent on family members who, themselves, had little resources to spare. As a result, I continued to do my job reliably and consistently: I wrote a thousand page book for Apple, describing their networking API. At home, I often cried a lot (it seemed to help with the pain) or sat huddled/isolated when I didn't have to cook/clean/feed the baby/help with homework/pay bills/etc. I spent a lot of time and money on a shrink because I realized that I also needed to reconstruct my "private" self in order not to traumatize my kids. However, the bottom line is that I had to serve my capitalist master first in order to assure the family's survival.

Generally, I assume one keeps one's "public" face longer than one's "private" face because one expects no sympathy or help from the public.

Joanna



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