Debbie Downer

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.