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Date Posted: 07:59:23 01/06/08 Sun
COLUMN
Pageant is ideal therapy for Mrs. Maine
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BILL NEMITZ
January 6, 2008
It's not your typical beauty pageant "platform." But Kristin Walton of Brunswick, aka Mrs. Maine 2008, has a story to tell -- and win, lose or draw, she's going to tell it.
"I'm dying to talk about it," Walton, 42, said over coffee Friday, fresh from her coronation photo shoot. "It's therapy for me."
She's talking about clinical depression. Her clinical depression. A depression that for years just about paralyzed her, until she found an escape hatch in, of all places, a beauty pageant.
"What I really want, more than anything, is to get my story out," Walton said. "It's probably the only time in my life and the only subject in my life where it doesn't matter what people think about me."
It's a story that for years played out in the shadows. Chronically depressed as a child and then as a young mother of three boys, Walton decided 12 years ago that she could no longer bear the fatigue, the tears and the sense of helplessness that got so bad, she had to take the kids to her mother's house each day because she simply couldn't take care of them by herself.
So she went to a doctor who knew a lot about depression. Sitting in his waiting room, she picked up a pamphlet that listed the warning signs.
"I went down the list and I had every symptom that was on that list," she said. "So I walked into the doctor's office and said, 'Here. I think I have this.' "
She was right. And although a succession of various medications helped, most left Walton feeling like she was watching the world go by without really feeling anything.
Then one day, while working at her job as a manicurist, she chatted with a client who was preparing for a Mrs. Maine pageant.
"You should do it, too," the woman told her. "You'd be great!"
Right again.
As the newly crowned Mrs. Maine 2008, Walton will travel to Las Vegas this summer to compete in the Mrs. United States pageant. Bob Walton, her husband of 21 years -- "Every day I thank God for him. I call him 'my medication.' " -- will accompany her.
She will do all the things beauty contestants do: the gown, the swimsuit, the 4-inch heels, the constant smile, the relentless stares from the judges ...
At the same time, she'll do something more important.
She'll talk about how depression, however debilitating, is nothing to be ashamed of. How many women, unlike her, don't have a supportive husband and family to help them recover. How, if only by putting herself out there (you can find her at www.mrsmaineus.com), "I would like to be that person for them."
Nervous? You bet she is.
Excited? That too.
Hopeful? What contestant in a beauty pageant doesn't show up dreaming of that moment when her name is called and the whole ballroom explodes with applause?
Of course, a fantasy like that presents a particular challenge for Walton: When your platform is depression -- your depression -- and you don't win, don't you run the risk of heading home, well, depressed?
Mrs. Maine 2008 shook her head and smiled.
The trip to Las Vegas "is just the bonus," she said. "I feel like I've already won."
Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at:
bnemitz@pressherald.com
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