The darkness.

My depression tends to get the best of me.  I haven’t been feeling well lately, and not in the sense of, I have a cold or I’m sick.  Depression takes a toll on your body.  I just don’t feel well.  I’m tired,  I want to sleep, my body hurts, my head hurts.  Along with that, I don’t want to do anything.  I’m content just staring at a wall for a few hours.  This gets in the way of things I want, or have to do.  It’s a lot easier for me to convince my self to get up and do something that I need to do, but not the things I want to do.  I want to write, but picking up the computer and typing, just seems like a feat.  Yesterday I wanted to upload my photos from vacation from back in October, then I wanted to finally download lightroom and start editing them.  I got as far and downloading the photos onto the computer.  People uneducated about depression would see me as lazy.  I’m not lazy but it’s hard to explain the lack of interest in anything sometimes.  Now, what I’m feeling, the depression I have at this moment, isn’t anything compared to a few years ago, and I am thankfully, pretty aware of when I start feeling like this.  My lows aren’t as low as they used to be, and I am grateful for that.  I assume that my brain is healthier now than it was.  Or a least that is the only thing that I can assume on why my depression doesn’t get as bad anymore.  But it’s still a hindrance.  I wish I had a normal brain.

When my depression kicks up, so does my paranoid thoughts and my anxiety.  My mind wanders to the worst thoughts sometimes.  For example, while sitting downstairs last night, watching a movie with my parents.  Which it was an animated movie, nothing that would have put bad thoughts in my mind.  My parents have nice couches that recline electronically.  My dog likes to lay under the leg rests when they are up.  And a random though popped into my head, if she was under one of the leg rests and someone put the let rest down, would she move, and if she didn’t move, would she at least make a loud enough noise to announce that part of her body was under the leg rest.  That though quickly turned into, if she was a puppy, and she was all the way under there, would anyone even notice that she was caught, would it kill her?  I then got very anxious and very sad, just thinking about that.  I love my dog so much, she is my child, and I often have these terrible thoughts, what if this happened, and could this happen, then I get anxious and sad.  To the point of almost crying.  And as I’m having these thoughts I ask my self, why are you thinking about this, why is this upsetting you so much?  It didn’t happen, and it probably wouldn’t, why are you so worried?  I don’t know…  I don’t know why my brain does this, but it happens all the time, and not just about my dog, it can be about the people I love the most, or my self.  And it makes it hard to function, to go do things.

I had a really bad week at work, and I’m not sure if it contributed to the depression or not, maybe this was a long time coming.  Depression is a slow spiral, and before I know it, I’m sitting in a room staring at a wall with no desire to do anything.  That is the moment, most of the time, that I realize I’m back in a low.  I don’t realize it right away, if I did, I would do something to stop it, if that is at all possible.  Now that I notice it, I have to try to figure out where it came from, I have to talk to someone, my husband, my best friend, my blog.  And if that doesn’t help, I’ll need to call my therapist.  Because, even though I said my lows aren’t as low as they used to be, I still have a fear of going to that place again.  To the place where self harm and suicide are an option.  And I wish it was as easy as saying, “I’m not going to be depressed, I’m going to be happy.”  Because I can put on that smile, and pretend I’m not depressed, but if I ignore it for long enough, I fall right back down into that hole, and I fought so hard to get out of  that hole.

Last weekend, a family member told me they believed me about my sexual abuse.  That moment felt so good, I don’t understand why I’m so depressed.  I thought that moment would be a turning point, a new chapter.  But as good as it felt to have someone believe me, it made me think of all the other people who don’t.  It made me think about the terrible things they have said to and about me.  Retelling my story opened up old wounds that I thought were healed, but they weren’t, they weren’t even scares yet, they were just scabs that got ripped off and I feel like they are bleeding again.

There is such a darkness inside of me that I hide, that I ignore exists.  I just want it to go away.

My Diagnosis and my path to getting treatment.

I was going to hold off on posting about this.  I was first going to talk about my sexual abuse and my abusive boyfriend but I think I’m going to touch on it now.

My depression started when I was around 12 or 13, it was mild, pretty common I think for a girl that age.  What wasn’t common was how is progressively got worse.  I had always gotten anxiety attacks, since I can remember.  I had always been more of a sensitive person.  Though I think me having anxiety my whole life is what really got my depression to spiral.  I have spoken before about my child sexual abuse, and at the time, not only did I not realize that I was depressed, but I also didn’t realize that a lot of my depression stemmed from that abuse.

Years went on and I got more depressed.  At age 18 I told my parents about my sexual abuse and they didn’t do anything.  No one did anything, and that’s when this uncontrollable black beast sunk it’s fangs in.

I was 19 when I was admitted to the first psych ward.  My boyfriend at the time (High School sweetheart) noticed that I had been self harming and he drove me to the hospital and told me that I had to admit my self.  So I did.  To this day, I don’t even know if my parents know that I was in there.  Shortly before this I had attended a therapist meeting with that same boyfriend.  Her and I had an off the books talk one day.  I told her about my abuse.  She laughed at me.  She told me that if what I claim happened, really happened, I would have reported it, and because I didn’t, she didn’t believe me.  I’ll talk more about that another time.

At the hospital I started talking to a doctor and sitting in group meetings with other people who were just as depressed as I was.  That doctor originally diagnosed me as bipolar.  I don’t know know how I felt about what he told me.  I was so lost at the time, my mind so clouded, plus they had me on a lot of different medication, I don’t remember a lot of my time there.  That particular doctor went on vacation, I don’t remember what holiday it was, memorial day maybe?

I woke up on the 4th morning with a doctor sitting on the wall heater next to my bed, his binder open.  I was extremely groggy from the sleeping medication they gave me the night before.  My insomnia was bad during this time, I wasn’t getting much sleep, and even the sleeping medication was having a hard time getting me to sleep.  I opened my eyes and the doctor looked at me, and the first words out of his mouth were “Why are you here”.  I was annoyed by this question.  I told him that everything should be in his binder.  He told me he wanted to here it from me.  I told him I was tired and I didn’t want to talk.  He slammed his binder shut and told me he was stopping all of my medication until I talked to him, then left my room.  I went to the nurse’s station and requested to talk to the head of the hospital, a few hour later I was in a room with the head of the hospital and I told her how rude the doctor had been, and that I wanted her to let me out, because the doctor wouldn’t sign off.  I think she feared that someone would sue the hospital, so she let me leave.  I never got a bill from them.

I was 20 when I was admitted to the psych ward the second time.  This time by a different guy I was dating, more specifically, the one who was abusive.  Pretty much same story, he noticed I was self harming, brought me to the hospital and told me to admit my self. And again, I did.  It was a different hospital this time, and although I didn’t think they would help me, at least while I was in there, he wouldn’t be around me.  I was there for a full week.  The doctor who saw me refused to diagnose me.  I told him about the doctor who laughed at me, the one who said I was bipolar and the other who stopped my medication.  He said that he wanted me to get more help before he would accept a diagnosis.  I didn’t understand that, but I didn’t question him.  After my week of talking with group therapy and one on one sessions, scheduled meals and medication, I left to continue state funded treatment for a few months until I stopped.

I was 22 when I downed a full bottle of xanex and was rushed to the emergency room.  My parents were there this time, they wouldn’t allow my boyfriend, still the abusive one, to see me.  They apologized for not being there, they told me to move back in with them, that I could go back on my fathers insurance, that they wanted me to get real help and that they would do whatever they could to save me.  I was able to go home that night, I slept in my bed for the first time since I was 18.  I found a therapist that I loved, we talked a lot, she diagnosed me with Cyclothymia.  Cyclothymia is pretty much the stage before bipolar I or II.  People with Cyclothymia don’t normally tend to attempt suicide but because of what I had gone through, I was pushed to that point.  I was on proper medication and I saw her at first, 3 times a week.

I tune 27 next week.  I am no longer on medication, because I can recognize my depression and handle it without the need to self harm or any other negative coping mechanism.  I still see my therapist from time to time, to talk and I have my parents and my husband and a few really good friends who help me as well.

I’m not perfect, but I’m surviving.

New year, new potential.

I haven’t done a new years resolution in a very long time.  And when I did do them, I never knew what I wanted.  What did I want to change about my self, that I honestly thought I could change?  My depression was so bad for so long, that I had this negative thing in side of me always telling me that, no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I wanted, I could never accomplish it.  Those dreams were just to far out of reach, and I didn’t deserve them, so don’t even bother.  When I ended up having a handle on my depression, and I was doing a good job of not listening to it, I still felt like there was nothing more out there for me than what I already had.  That the accomplishments of getting over and through the things that I had dealt with for those years, almost felt like enough, or at least I thought it was enough.  But it isn’t enough.  I may not be so depressed that I want to kill my self, or have fantasy of driving home when a semi truck just comes out of no where and ends my life in a car accident.  No, I’m not that depressed anymore.  But I still struggle so much with so many other things.  My moods are still so hard to control, I say some things to my husband that later on I ask my self why I would even do or say that?  What possessed me to lash out like that?  I used to write all the time, and draw, I loved photography and to read but my depression took all of that away from me.  I was in such a dark place, that those things that I used to enjoy so much, were such a hassle to do.  I didn’t want to go outside and travel to the park to take pictures, even though, at one point in my life, going some place quiet and finding the beauty in nature was something that was so therapeutic.  Writing and drawing when it wasn’t feasible to be outside was another love of mine.  I used to be so creative and I loved my work but, that dark creature sucked the life out of everything I enjoyed.  I would just sit and watch tv, or play video games.  Eventually, my writing became so mundane that I didn’t enjoy doing it at all.  Nothing that I wrote ever seemed good enough, so I would just hide it or not do it at all.  I stopped drawing for so long, the lines on the paper won’t even come together in a coherent form to make anything worth looking at.  And photography, I put my camera down for so long, that when I decided to pick it back up, technology left me in the dust and I barley know how to work a camera any more.

So in 2015 I want to pick my hobbies back up.  I want to continue to write this blog in hopes that my confidence in my writing and my writing ability will grow into something better than what it once was.  I want to read more, I want to read books, and comics and magazines and other people’s blogs.  I want to fill my mind with the creativity of others.  I want to take my camera everywhere and I want to start taking special trips by my self to the park.

I want to like my self again.  I want to look at my self in the mirror and say, hey, you are worth something.  You have talent.  That last blog post you shared was great.  That last photo shoot you did was mesmerizing.  I want to look at my self and be able to tell my self that I am beautiful.  I want to spend a little extra time on me.  Because I’m worth me spending time on.

Another things my depression took away from me, was my friends.  I pushed so many people away that, I don’t have many people anymore.  I have my husband, whom loves me, even though I’ve tried to push him away as well, he has always stuck by my side.  Then I have Elizabeth and Doug.  Doug is someone I have known since I was 3, and although we don’t see each other very much anymore, he is a brother to me and no matter what happens, I know that I can always rely on him.  And Elizabeth is someone I met in the very middle of the darkest time of my life.  And no matter what I did to my self or others, she saw something inside of me that she didn’t want to let go of.  The problem is, those 2 friends live far away.  So they aren’t there on a daily basis, I can’t just plan a Saturday morning coffee date with either of them.  But I no longer know what it is like to maintain a close friendship/relationship with people.  So this year, I want to be a better friend to those who stayed by my side when I wasn’t a friend worth having, but I also want to obtain new friends, or maybe rekindle old friendships with people I used to be close with.

These are the things that I want to work on this year wish me luck.