~I Am The Face Of Depression~

Trying to explain depression to someone who doesn't have it is difficult. I am not sure if any two people suffer from it in the same way.I imagine since we each take things in differently, depression is as different as we each are from one another. I only know what I feel...Let me try to paint a picture...

I started a new depression medication a few months ago. It's one I tried after the birth of my kids but it didn't work very well back 15 years ago. For some reason it seems to work okay now. Maybe because my depression this time is so deep and dark that anything is better in comparison.

I will be the first to admit that I am not very good at staying on my depression medications. I start them with such hope, take them as prescribed for months but then either lack of money, a missed doctors appointment to get a refill for them or my brain makes me stop taking them.  The first two reasons are difficult enough but the third one is the toughest. I start to believe that I am "cured" even though a voice inside warns that I am certainly not. Still,  I argue with that voice that I can beat the sadness this time and that I will just go off the prescription for a little while to see how it goes.For some reason I have a rather short memory when it comes to my mental health. Or possibly it's naive hope? Either way, it's ridiculous.  Before I know it though I am so far immersed into depression and a feeling of utter hopelessness that there is no going back. It's time to start over...Again.

I've been suicidal more times than I can count.  But that feeling didn't start with a bad day or a series of awful experiences. Sometimes I can be watching television or staring out the window and suddenly I am overwhelmed with a longing for my life to be over. I have experienced this suicidal idealization even when medicated, even in the past week in fact.

I think the difference in me and maybe another person who comes to a suicidal place is perhaps another part of my brain~ The part that likes to dissect, pick apart and analyze my emotions.  I will allow myself a few moments of imagining my farewell but then I will start the process of  separating out the emotions and, as they lay squirming there, try to put them in order realistically.  That word makes me laugh because when I am depressed there is no such thing as reality. I see most things in my world as quite askew.  Well, at least that is what I learn after I get on the medication. That's when I can look back on the "other" Stacy and recognize all the influence my depression had on my thinking.

How long have I been this way, I wonder.  I suppose since I was born.  Even before the events that changed my life~ sexual abuse several times, growing up with a sibling who not only craved but demanded most of my parent's attention~ I remember being very sad. I remember crying all the time and a feeling of never fitting in.  I could be at my own birthday party among all of my close friends yet still feel so alone and left out.  There is where doubt of myself began...as a child.

Being depressed...How do I explain it to someone who has never had more than a case of the blues? It's like trying to explain what darkness looks and feels like. There aren't enough adjectives in the English language to explain it. At least not for me.  I guess like others have described for many years, it's like drowning.  Imagine you are swimming along and suddenly a current takes you under. You feel yourself slipping into the strong arms of an unseen monster. You don't even have the right to look in its eyes or fight back but only succumb to its tugging of you out of the daylight because it offers a warmth and a comfort that the blinding sunlight does not. (Literally and figuritively I can attest to this as I hate the sunlight. Even now...I keep all the curtains in the house closed.)

"My" sunlight and "yours" are probably two different things entirely though. "My" sunlight is harsh, too hot and shows me all the imperfects in things around me but especially in myself. The darkness on the other hand is cool but not cold. It is like being swaddled in a big comfy comforter and though it's lonely and I feel great sadness there, it is as familiar as being home.  Somehow there in that darkness I am not challenged to feel more than sadness or to hope. Hope is enemy number one when you have depression.

So here I am sad but protected in my depression, having no tomorrow to worry about or dreams to live up to and then with the swallow of one pill, I am pulled out like a baby out of its bath. All because a loved one wants me to be what they see as "happy".  Now for my kids, for my family, friends and loved ones I  have to try to this thing called living and try to be an accepted amount of "normal". (You know, like getting out of bed, eating food, smiling and wanting to do more than be in a coma.)

But to be fair, somewhere in all that comfort of depression I've looked out the cracks and witnessed what this so called "Happiness" is that others seem to feel.  I hear the laughter beating against the protection of my shell and see people dancing and celebrating life. I want it. I envy them.  I grow more depressed because I want to want that life but I don't know if I deserve it or have the energy.

So, after weeks of faithfully taking these prescribed medications, having no idea how they are going to help me or what they do inside of this brain, one morning I wake up and step out of bed. Not because I have to but because I almost want to.  No, I am not cured yet. It will take practice on my part...I will have to force myself to eat, encourage myself to let even an inch of that sunlight in that's been fighting the curtains to shine in here.  I will have to talk myself into going to the grocery store and the doctor, promising myself that on the other side of doing these awful things, I will be back home, safe and sound.

Day after long day the medication does its thing.  Just like a "regular" person I have bad days and good but sometimes I have days where I lay in bed and stare at the ceiling fan whirling, wondering what my use is in this world. Other days I laugh...I mean, really laugh from down in my tummy. I have hope, I eat food. I sleep when I am supposed to and wake when I should. I look forward to hearing the voices of my kids 3,000 miles away and expressing to them how much I love and miss them. I also want to tell them that of everything that is wrong in this world, they are my light, my heart, my soul. I want to promise both of them that I will never choose to leave them...or this world...before its my "time". Yet I don't. I won't.  Saying those words also means saying that if I did leave them that it was because they weren't enough to break through my depression and that is not the case. In the 17 years that I have been blessed to know my son and the 15 I've had with my daughter, they have been two of the very few and real things I have allowed myself to feel. How could I not? They are both amazing people.  Yet, I could not ever put the weight of my depression ~or recovery from it~ on them.  I am this way because of a disease, not a choice.  It would be like saying "I had diabetes but was able to beat it because of my love for my kids."  It's the same thing, these diseases, because we have no say over them....Except to treat them with these medications and pray that we get ahead of the problem.

Sadly though the truth is that I often feel like my medication is just a bigger, warmer blanket. One that keeps my brain from thinking too much about the truth that is life and keeps a fake night light shining from out of some corner. A part of the brain I'll never find or reach. That scares me honestly because I do not want to depend on something that can falter, go out or that I may suddenly go without for any of the reasons I mentioned before. Sometimes I feel like I am on a flimsy raft, with a tiny yet determined leak, and it's just a matter of time before I fall back into the lake of depression.

I am not sure if I have explained my experience with depression in a way that a non-depressed person could understand. I hope I have but I also pray that no one else will ever know how this disease feels. Sadly though I know that more people deal with this darkness than I can even count.  I could write a book on how it has affected me over the years and I am certain I could keep any doctor busy. For now I will leave it here until I am ready to dive deeper. One step at a time.