Depression, My Old Friend

I'm sorry I haven't posted in forever. I keep hoping that after a doctor's appointment I'd be able to get on here and post that we'd finally found the right medicine combination for me! But it hasn't happened yet. And the fact that we haven't found the right combination means that right now, I'm in a slump. It got particularly bad last week. On Thursday I felt so miserable that even getting out of bed was a major challenge. Luckily it was a short-lived bad streak and today I'm feeling alright. I think I'm still mildly depressed because I still don't feel a whole lot of joy in the world, but I'm headed the right direction. For now. Which brings me back to depression, my old friend.

I've dealt with depression off and on since I was 10 or 11 years old. Maybe younger, but definitely by then. I know this because when I was in 5th grade (11 years old) my uncle committed suicide and I had a major wake up call. I was seriously scared because I realized that I was depressed and headed toward suicide if I didn't get help. That's not a wake up call any 5th grader should ever experience, but unfortunately, it was mine. It's been over 15 years and I've had many wake up calls since then, most of them dealing with depression. They all started with one day in May when my parents said my uncle had disappeared and was suicidal.

Depression was a hush, hush topic at my house which is kind of silly. I've had two uncles commit suicide. You'd think we would have talked about it. And we did...kind of. But when we talked about my uncles, we talked about their faults. One was an alcoholic, so him being depressed and committing suicide could be easily explained away (because him being an alcoholic couldn't possibly have been because he was depressed). The other had anger issues (again, couldn't be the depression/mental health disorder causing the anger not the other way around). Depression and suicide were always talked about as if they were the result of something wrong with the character of the person if they were talked about at all. So what was a little 11 year old supposed to think on that day when I realized that I was depressed? I thought there must be something wrong with me, my character, my person that made me depressed. Maybe I wasn't a good enough girl. Maybe I was too sensitive. Maybe I had the wrong attitude. Maybe I needed to repent of something I was doing wrong.

I was scared to tell anyone I was depressed because that would be admitting there was something wrong with me. I did tell my dad that I was sad a lot of the time, and nothing came of it. That experience "proved" to me that telling people didn't help and could potentially hurt. So I told no one until I was in 8th or 9th grade when I told my best guy friend. He told me that he couldn't even imagine me as sad. I was a good little liar by that point. But underneath my big smiles was the lurking depression.

Depression lived with me through high school, through my foreign exchange trip to Germany, and on. The worst was when it completely messed up my first attempt at college. I went from being an honor student to being put on academic probation. It was in college that I was initially diagnosed as having clinical depression. You should have seen my mom (whose two brothers committed suicide) when I told her I was diagnosed with depression and went on medicine. Her crocheting went from the normal relaxed to super duper fast. She was angry. The thing that helped me was my "perfect" sister was diagnosed with depression about the same time. Me, my depression might be brushed aside as behavioral issues, but my sister didn't have those in my book. Obviously depression ran in my family. With that diagnosis I started to let go of the belief that there was a flaw in my character because of my depression. Even if my mom couldn't see that it was a medical issue, not a character issue, I started to realize it and that was enough.

Now I know that I don't struggle with clinical depression. I'm bipolar NOS and have to deal with hypomania on top of my depression. Depression, my old friend, is only half the battle. But for me, it's the worst half. It's the half that robs me of my will to live. It's the half that makes me feel worthless and not good enough. It's the half that makes me think that maybe my mom was right and there is something wrong with me beyond my disorder.

Depression may be my frequent companion, but I refuse to let it rob me of my life. I've been suicidal before. I know what it's like to review my life and think there's nothing worth living for but that's a lie. There is ALWAYS something worth living for, even if it's just to see one more sunset, to watch the moon make it's way across the sky, to see a delicate flower. Life can be beautiful, even if it's only for a moment. One moment is sometimes all it takes to keep me going for one more day. And each day turns into another until somehow I find myself waking up one morning and realizing that my friend, depression, has left me once more.