Yesterday was a weird fuckin’ day. I don’t know how else to
explain. I was pretty “up”, but in this really kind of manic/euphoric/”too up”
kind of way. And then I felt happy/excited and numb/neutral all at once. I
found almost everything funny or uplifting and sort of glossed over anything
else. I went out for trivia night for the first time in over a month and had a
great time. But shortly after returning home, I crashed. I crashed hard. I
wanted to just sit and cry. I was exhausted. I felt stupid and ugly and fat.
This came completely out of nowhere. The last couple days, I
thought, “All the cardio!! It’s working!! The endorphins are killing my
depression!!” I was still down, but not Deep Dark Depression down like I had
been the last few weeks and even up to this past weekend. I was laughing more,
finding positives in things, being somewhat productive at work. Until I wasn’t
anymore.
If I wasn’t so absent-minded, I feel like it would do me
some good to track my moods and see if there’s any kind of pattern. If it’s a
cycle, or if it’s random. If it’s caused by outside stressors, or just inside
thoughts. That’s part of why I’m writing this today. This will at least be a
partial documentation.
Some of you may be aware of this phone app called “Timehop”.
It accesses your Facebook and shows you your status updates on that day’s date
in years past. I came to a very upsetting realization – I’ve been struggling
with these feelings for a lot longer than I realized, most of them
materializing during my pregnancy with Nolan. While I knew at the time
something was wrong – crying everyday for no reason, generally not being
interested in anything, feeling like I was losing my identity, feeling
alienated from my friends, having to use sick days because I just couldn’t get
out of bed – I attributed most of it to my pregnancy hormones, but I took the
right steps and began counseling for the first time in my adult life. I thought
those feelings of depression and anxiety were stemming from memories of my
first pregnancy, which was a very tumultuous, sad, and stressful time in my
life. I had normal baby blues postpartum, continued my counseling, and by that
summer my counselor told me she felt like I was doing pretty well and I could
call if I felt like I needed to come in for an appointment but there was no
need to keep anything regularly scheduled.
About 4 months later I started wavering again. I put it off
and put it off – making the call, scheduling the appointment. “I have the
tools, I can work through this. I just need to eat better and exercise more, do
some yoga, write it all down, find my positive affirmations, don’t give in to
the automatic negative thoughts. It’s okay. I have the tools. I have the
tools.” I started blogging a lot. But not about too much of my personal life,
except the story of how
I punched my microwave that one time and why. In my
blogging I was constantly beating myself up over my lack of “priorities”,
talking about being on and off the exercise bandwagon, etc. etc. etc. I’ve
always struggled with consistency. Now, whether that’s just the type of person
I am or a side-effect of my depression/anxiety, I have no idea.
I think it was finally around spring 2013 that I called my
counselor to schedule an appointment. I think my husband told me I really
needed to. I think, because I don’t really remember. (My memory has gotten
really bad lately. I’ve probably mentioned this before… but I don’t remember. I
know this is a very common side-effect of high stress as well as depression.
I’m aware of it. It continues to get worse and worse even as my depression
waxes and wanes.) The woman I used to see was no longer with the practice – in
fact, she wasn’t in private practice at all anymore. It was devastating. I
wasn’t interested in seeing anyone else in that practice, though I probably
should have just scheduled an appointment anyhow. I told myself I’d ask around
for some recommendations and find someone else.
I didn’t actually call anyone else for another 10 months.
The beginning of this year. And only after I began to realize that I wanted to
somehow be dead a lot of the time. Not kill myself – just not be alive anymore.
I mean, I already wasn’t really alive, so what was the difference? Everything
is just horrible and miserable, so what’s the point? I’m a terrible wife and
mother and a disappointment as a daughter, so really no one will miss me;
they’ll be better off without me.
That’s pretty scary. What’s scarier is that in starting with
this new feelings doctor, I haven’t ever verbally expressed that I had these
feelings. I wasn’t purposely keeping them a secret, I just felt like it wasn’t
really that big of a deal. I mean, I didn’t want to kill myself so I wasn’t
suicidal, right? That’s kind of how I thought of it. Wishing you would go to
sleep and just somehow not wake up the next morning is not the same as actively
taking steps to ensure that one day that would actually happen. At least,
that’s how I thought of it at the time (and even now sometimes). And then after
a couple months I didn’t really feel that way anymore. I don’t know what
changed, really. I just felt a little more normal. But that didn’t last very
long. Maybe 5 weeks at the most.
With the way I’ve felt lately, it’s probably about damn time
that I mention the “sometimes I wish I were dead” at the beginning of this
year, because I’ve had moments in the last couple months where I’ve felt that
way again. Not everyday, not even consecutive days at a time, but for a
morning, or an afternoon, or an evening here and there. I’ve felt pretty
worthless mostly, and like a disappointment. That’s not a fun feeling. It’s not
an okay way to be.
I’ve been thinking a lot on medication recently. I’ve always
been against medication for “mild” depression. I’ve always felt like there are
just so many things you can do to naturally work through it. All the things
that I struggle to consistently do all the time; exercise, eat right, get
enough sleep, meditate/do yoga. I don’t even have an official depression
diagnosis, let alone know if what I struggle with would be considered “mild” or
not. I still get out of bed every morning and take care of my kids and go to
work and clean my house and do my laundry. I still bathe regularly. I feed
myself pretty regularly. I still make plans and go out with my friends.
It’s just that sometimes I start crying for no obvious
reason, or I feel numb and just sit around and stare into space thinking about
nothing and everything. Sometimes when I’m out doing something I know I should be having fun, but I’m not or I
don’t care or I’m just bored, even though I know I used to enjoy those same
activities.
I know that I don’t want to feel this way anymore. And where
I am right now, today, I feel like it might be this way forever. That I’ll
never have more than just a couple weeks (a month or two at best) of feeling
“normal”. Not even happy. Just normal. I can’t live like that. I need
some fucking JOY in my life, man. I need motivation and purpose. I feel like where I am in my head right now I will never find that. I will never love
myself as a person enough to make the hard decisions and take the necessary
risks. That is fucking terrifying!! I don’t know how to let it all go. And I
don’t even know if it’s a matter of “letting it go” or if my brain chemistry is
just out of whack.
If there is a pill that can make these feelings even 20%
less of what they are right now, that would be fantastic. Sign me up. And this
is coming from the girl that had two of what I consider to be the worst
side-effects when I was on Prozac for my anxiety several years back; insomnia
and “sexual side-effects”. It suuuuucked.
But y’know what? I didn’t feel like my airways were restricted and my heart was
going to explode out of my chest every time I was out in public anymore. And
that was pretty awesome. Now, the difference there was that I also knew it was
temporary – I was learning how to identify my triggers and then coming off the
meds. Which I did after about 6 months. Sleep and sex went back to normal
pretty quickly. I also wasn’t working at the time, so the loss of sleep was not
that big of a deal. I could take a nap in the afternoon when James took a nap
if I felt like I needed to.
So what is the point of divulging all this information to
you, Dear Readers? I have no idea. I’m sort of just brain vomiting right now.
Yesterday was really fuckin’ weird and I just needed to talk (type) it out and
work through it. This morning/afternoon were rough, but I’m feeling a little
bit better now. I did just play 2 hours of tennis, so the endorphin boost may
have something to do with that. We’ll see how tomorrow morning is. Tomorrow
night I have dinner plans with a good friend that I don’t see very often and I am looking forward to that. Hopefully I
can maintain a decent mood and be able to enjoy dinner and drinks with her.
That would be super duper.
