April 19, 2005
In which she reflects on her depression
Ever since I was first diagnosed with depression in the fall of 2003, I have been attempting to find some understanding, not only of this disease, but also of its effects on my life. And no matter how much I discover, I am still always surprised (or is it appalled?) by the way “outsiders” view the ailment. I guess, having finally reached the point where others are almost comfortable using the seemingly innocent, yet loaded phrase, “I’m so depressed” around me, I’m still confused by the stigma that seems to hang around depression. I don’t understand why people felt that they needed to tiptoe around me when I was first diagnosed. It was as if I was a minefield they were carefully treading around and that they feared one misstep would sent of a gigantic explosion that would level us all.
I’m no longer in the midst of that particular depressive episode, but I do have to face the fact that another one may be just around the corner. And I still have to deal with depression as a whole every day. I still don’t understand everything, but I can’t just turn my back on all of it because I’m doing okay right now.
Sometimes I feel as if that person is so far away, that it’s all but a distant memory of a life I once had. But other times it feels as though I am teetering on the brink about to fall into a volcano of emotions I’m not sure that I can handle.
I think my quest for understanding of this disease called depression has left me with the burden of knowledge. All those warning signs you are supposed to recognize in others that no one ever recognized in me (which I know is partly my fault because I pushed people away) and I know that it’s mostly my anxiety acting up, but those things that I recognize as symptoms of my previous bouts of depression and they are those official warning signs but I recognize them sometimes as pieces of my present instead of relics of my past and it makes me so worried because I don’t know if I can survive again. It’s taken so much time and work to get where I am now that I don’t ever want to go back. And I guess the real problem is that I know another serious episode is always a possibility.
I just remembered something while writing this and I don’t know whether it is significant or not. After I was first diagnosed with depression, when I first told my roommate about everything she said, “I wondered if that might be the case.” But if she suspected that I was, in fact, depressed, why the hell didn’t she tell me? I obviously didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me; I openly obsessed about it for weeks. If she had any idea that I might have been in trouble, why didn’t she try to help me? Jessica told me that she thought something was going on with me, but she was so far away and she didn’t really know that much about what was really going on. She said she thought it might have just been my new schedule or something. I know for sure that had she been there, she would have done something to try to help me. I guess, looking back, I realize that I suffered with the depression for a long time before I was actually diagnosed and everything that I would have liked to have caught it earlier. Then maybe things would have turned out differently.
When I was first diagnosed and I went to the Campus Mental Health Services, the psychologist I saw felt the solution, or “the cure” for my condition was to go to class. That’s how easy it was to her…just go to class. (Not that it would have made a difference had I gone to class, I was already irreversibly failing almost all of them.) What she didn’t understand I guess, is that it wasn’t that easy for me. There were all these invisible barriers preventing me from doing all those things I was supposed to do. Partly related to the depression, and party related to the anxiety that was never diagnosed by the quack at Mental Health Services even though I told her everything I told my current therapist who is the one who did diagnose the anxiety. I now believe that the anxiety was the catalyst for the depression, and I now know that depression is a common side effect of serious anxiety.
The psychologist at Mental Health Services didn’t think my depression was serious because I told her I was never suicidal. Which I wasn’t, but that didn’t have anything to do with the depression. Besides, I think at that point suicide would have been too much effort for me to put forth.
I guess that’s one of the things that I hate the most. People assume that curing depression is as easy as going for a walk or getting out of bed, taking a shower, getting dressed and doing whatever it is you have to do that day. But it’s not that easy for someone who is seriously depressed. Even going to the bathroom is a chore. (Not that I didn’t ever not go to the bathroom to do my business). Sometimes, no matter how much you may want to be living a “normal” life, it’s just not possible. Sometimes, it just doesn’t seem that worth it.
I guess it’s just hard to feel like you need to explain everything to people who will never be able to understand, or people who already have their minds made up about it, even if they really know nothing about it. It’s so hard having to deal with being depressed and all the medical appointments and therapy sessions and just trying to get your life back together and then on top of it having to deal with others who either treat you like a ticking time-bomb or leper or treat you as if you have just told them you are suffering from an imaginary disease instead of a real condition.
It’s so weird to be feeling like this. Last time I wrote I was feeling so happy and on top of the world and now I’m back wallowing in the wreckage of my past. I guess when I really look back at things I notice how emotionally stunted all that medication made me. And it was a good thing, believe me, without it I might not have made it thorough everything. But at the same time, it also dulled me and made me almost a shell of what I once was. I’ve always been blessed with the powers of insight and reflection, even if they don’t always work on me all the time, but I feel as if the Zoloft in some way took some of that away from me during the time I was taking it. I kind of feel that I am just beginning to really deal with all those emotions from that period since I almost wasn’t able to at the time.
I guess I just have many unresolved issues from that period of my life that I’ve barely begun to deal with. And I guess it will all just keep coming up until I do finally deal with it all. I guess it’s good to know that I haven’t completely gone over the edge and that I am still able to feel things like anger, sadness, and even defeat. And I guess that takes me closer to once again feeling on top of the world, because I do feel like I finally have a handle on all of this and that instead of being controlled by whatever was going on with me, I’m finally back in the driver’s seat and I am finally able to take whatever course it is that I want to take; not only with my healing, but with my life.
zappagrrl at 3:11 p.m.