This is the story of how we all very nearly lost our dear old friend, farmgirl.
She had a brush with the nasty of the nastiest, that mean old monster, depression.
Farmgirl has always prided herself on being able to find the funny and some sort of joy in all the journeys life has taken her on.
The last two years life has taken her on a journey that has worn and frazzled her right to the bone.
Farmgirl's not afraid of living tight. She's not afraid of hard work. She's not afraid of buckling down and just making things work. She's good like that.
The 2009-2010 school year was a tough one, it beat her up pretty badly, at the end of the 2010 school year she fled to Idaho, home, back to the farm and the roots that make her strong, and hid for the summer.
She worked on all her farmgirlness and came back fighting. She was ready to take on the world again.
Only, it didn't last. Not as long as she was hoping it would.
By October-ish she was starting to fade again. How could this be?
There's no easy escape in the middle of the school year.
And that's when the nasty of the nastiest started to creep into her life.
Let's be honest, he had been creeping for a long, long time. But, he finally saw his moment.
You won't make it, he said.
Why try?, he said.
Things will never change, he said.
And she began to listen.
She could feel herself closing down, bit by tiny bit.
Thanksgiving time, and she was struggling to hold it together.
December came.
Things that have always brought her copious amounts of joy, brought her little.
December was a remarkably hard month.
She kept going through the motions of what a normal farmgirl might do, but she felt as though her little farmgirl heart had been squooshed.
There was no joy in Mudville, Mighty farmgirl had struck out.
Until one day, a particularly hard, sad day, a day she cried her eyes out to her dear old hubby, she cried and she cried, all the afternoon she cried, she cried the evening away and into the night she poured all her heartache and worry out to him, told him of how she wanted to avoid so much of her life and most everything in it.
She told him of her visit from the mean old monster, depression.
And you know what? He listened. He heard her. He got it.
Some how, some way he said what needed to be said, said what needed to be heard.
After another week or so she started to have glimpses of the happiness she once knew.
For a few moments a day she would feel like her old farmgirl self again, really like she was her, and not just pretending to be her, like she had been for weeks and weeks.
And now, my friends, after a much too long absence, I am happy to report that she is starting day three of that full time farmgirl feeling.
And it's nice.
She is not fool enough to think that her battle with the nastiness is over, but she is a fighter.
She is a survivor and she will make it.
