Having
depression does not always mean that individual is going to show it in their
everyday life. Francis is doing exactly that. Not showing his depression. In
chapter seven he begins to go to school. Throughout the day certain things
triggered certain memories and his best friend Houston wasn’t helping by
talking about his father and what they did over the weekend. I choose this
picture because I feel it describes how Francis feels at home verses school. At
home Francis is more open about his sadness towards his father’s suicide and is
able to express his emotions to his family. But at school Francis is not
willing to express his emotions because he fears he will be labeled. For example
on page sixty-eight he says he does not want to be some sort of “grief freak”.
He also goes on to explain how he feels about people in his school. ”At our
school people sniff out differences like killer sharks going for blood. You’re
supposed to be free to express yourself, but you’d better be the same as
everybody-or else.”(Chalifour, 2005, pg.30) This explains to us why Francis does not want people in school to know about his depression. It's probably because he believes everyone at school will treat him as an outcast. The mask in this picture for me represented his way of hiding from the outside world and not
letting them know how he feels. It’s essentially his way of isolating himself.
When an individual is battling with depression they use the method of
pretending to be happy as a way to make themselves believe they are alright.
Losing a loved one can be a very difficult transition in your life. But
what's more difficult is the journey from denial to acceptance, also known as
the grieving process. The grieving process has five steps to it. Denial/shock, anger,
bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. Since every individual experiences
grief in different ways. The order of the process or even some steps in the
process do not always have to apply to you. You could start right from the
start or at a different stage. The best way I can describe grief would be, it’s
the walk you take alone knowing the feeling comes and goes.
( watch video up to 1:27 please)
I chose this video to help myself and you understand the process
Francis is going through to understand and accept his father's suicide. Francis
started his process right from the start. In chapter one shock is very evident.
“I swear my heart stopped beating. My throat constricted, and my belly hurt as
if a wolf had eaten my guts”(Chalifour, 2005, pg. 7). This is what Francis says after
his mother tells him his father is dead. His way of describing what he felt
makes it obvious he was in shock. Anger can manifest itself due to the
individual blaming others or even themselves for the death of the deceased individual.
In Francis’s situation he chose to blame others and take his anger out on them.
By chapter three Francis began to shut himself out from the outside world. When
his mother tried to talk to him his reply was “There’s nothing wrong! Leave me
alone”(Chalifour, 2005, pg. 34). The reason he was feeling so angry was because he kept blaming himself for his father's death and took his frustration out on everyone around him. Bargaining
is an interesting stage. Because it can be different for everyone depending on
the situation. For example if the person is facing death they can be bargaining
with their beliefs. If it’s someone facing the death of a loved one (in our
case Francis) they tend to bargain with their spiritual beliefs. “Do you
believe in god?” It had never occurred to me to wonder what she believed, but
now it seemed urgent for me to know.” (Chalifour, 2005, pg. 58).This is the
best quote from the book for me to understand bargaining. This was the start
for Francis when he began questioning the existence of god and why he chose to
hurt his father. The reason I chose the grief process besides the fact it
described Francis’s situation was because one of the hardest stages in the
process is depression. It is the stage that lasts either for a long time or
short. I feel for Francis this stage lasted the longest. Throughout my book his
depression was very evident. The process helped me understand why depression is hard to overcome. The
reason I chose to talk about the grieving process is because for me it changed
my opinion on depression. I realized that depression was not actually an
obstacle in an individual’s way to move on. Instead it was an aid that helped
us appropriately move on and heal. When I first read about the process I felt
depression was the stage that was the most hardest because it stopped the
person from accepting whatever loss they were going through and instead it
filled you with feelings of sadness, guilt and etc. but what I failed to realize
was that the reason you felt sad to begin with was because you accepted the
loss and now you are beginning to heal. This opened my eyes because
I realized depression actually was the hardest because it was the stage that
helped us learn to accept even the hardest situations we might go through in
life. If we can learn to battle through depression then what we are actually
doing are learning to accept our feelings and realize that the whole time we
felt depressed was because we were denying the truth. For Francis he was trying
to deny the pain he was bearing in his heart regarding his father’s death.
