Some times it seems more difficult to manage than other times.
Which is ridiculous, because nothing really changes around me.
What changes on those difficult days, is that little voice inside my head.
That little voice is my depression.
I've struggled with depression since I was in my early teens. Then it was a combo of the ADHD and the medications I had been given to control it. Without something to calm me, I was like a two year old who constantly pushed the buttons and was always going 90 to nothing in a heartbeat. I was a happy child, but I could also throw a hell of a tantrum.
Then I got a medication that I only took once a day, because the Ritalin wasn't working since I had been on it since I was diagnosed ADHD. That medicine changed my personality, because of how restrained it made me. Instead of the loving young girl I was with my family, I turned into someone who was anti-social, and who would react to people in a threatening sort of way. I had my nose in books, and I didn't really talk to people. I didn't want affection. I didn't want to give it, or receive it in any way.
It helped when I started to see a Psychologist. Not much, but it did. He got me on a different ADHD med. That was basically the extent of the good that he did. I'm not super comfortable talking to strangers, and at the age I was at that point, I was very surly, unhappy, and definitely not a talkative person.
Yesterday though, between all the rain we had, and my tiredness, my depression kicked up a notch.
It's been a tolerable thing to deal with since I graduated high school. I had a really low point last year where when I should have been in classes, I wasn't, and even though I wasn't home because anything was better than seeing the disappointed look on my mother's face, and then getting the lecture from my father when he came home.
It felt like no one understood. As if I was all alone, and the only one who was battling this monster that only I could see.
I know now of course that it was my depression, but it isn't exactly something I can talk to my father about, and I tried to avoid being home at the same time as my mom, because most of my classes were during the morning, and I still did work nights, so I would get out of class at 11 or 1. I would leave wherever I had gone at that time and go home and go to bed without seeing much of her.
She would always ask me how class was, and I would tell her a bs answer. Usually something along the lines of "it was fine. Really tired tho. I'mma go to bed. Love you."
Short, sweet, and to the point. My mom was the one who would have known that something was wrong with me if I had never left the house.
That semester was probably the lowest point in my life that I have been since I was a young teen, and even then I didn't sink as low as I had.
See when I was a teen, I thought about suicide. At one point I even had a knife in my room, and I knew just which veins I needed to slice, and how deep it needed to be, so that I would bleed out.
Before I could though, a young woman who I had made friends with through a mutual friend, committed suicide. Going to her funeral, seeing how devastated her whole family was, and everyone who knew her, that broke through my depression to me, and I realized something.
I realized that I didn't want to do that to my family.
Because even if I haven't changed anyone else's life, or made a huge impact on the world, my family loves me. They are my rock, my shelter, my safety net. They are the people I can depend on to give me a hand up so that I can get back on my own two feet.
I got better after that, but the depression has never fully gone away, and there are times when something will happen, and I get dragged down into the pit of it again, but most of the time I can manage to hang on the ledge, and sometimes I'm even just sitting on the ledge staring down into the pit.
I can't say I haven't thought about suicide again, but it is simply a passing thought that doesn't linger because I don't allow it to.
It is a battle, every day, to get up, to go out, to not make excuses or procrastinate.
Some days I am more successful than others. Some days I barely can manage to drag myself out of bed.
I go to work. I go home. I worry. I sleep.
That's what happens on my bad days.
On my good days I laugh. I have fun. I play with my animals. I read a book. I cook good food. I talk with my family. I talk with my friends. I laugh and smile more.
The looming darkness that is my depression is held at bay on the good days. I can see the good things, my mask of "happy" and "normal" is put away for the real me. The me that can laugh at the silly things, that sings songs that range from Disney to Broadway to Country to Eminem rap songs to Alternative to Blues.
On my good days, my smile, my joy, my laughter is much, much more infectious than it is on my bad ones. I'm willing to make plans with people, and go out and about to take care of errands and my first thoughts aren't automatically how long will this take before I can go home, or that I still have so much to do.
Yesterday the rain seemed to provide the perfect excuse to do nothing. I know though, that if I had truly wanted to get the things accomplished that needed to be accomplished, I could have. I could have gone to the dog park in a hoodie, and taken my dog to play. I could have done some cleaning around my apartment. Yet between the rain and my depression, I did nothing.
On a good day I rejoice in the rain. After all, I live in Texas and Lord knows we always could use more of it. Not to mention I love how it smells so good. Like green and growing things. After the rain is gone everything is beautiful, green, and blooming.
Yesterday though, it was as if I was drowning. Drowning, and unable to help myself. Even though I know how to swim, it felt like weights were dragging me down, and no matter how much I longed to float on the surface and tread water, I just kept sinking and drowning.
Like a bad dream, that when you wake up from it, you aren't completely sure that you are awake, or if you are still dreaming and the monster that was chasing you is going to reach out from the darkness and drag you down into the dark depths of its lair.
My depression is a constant companion. It's that acquaintance that you aren't sure how you met, but you don't really want to be around. Unfortunately they work with you, live in the same area as you, and go to all the things that you do.
It's inescapable, undeniable, and you can never get rid of it.
Depression can be so difficult to explain to people who have never experienced it. A few months back I found a pretty good video that explains it. It's spoken poetry, because I have an obsession with it, and I really, really understand what she's saying.
Except my own mother actually understands depression. It's my father that doesn't. That's okay though. He usually tries to be supportive, or he just ignores it.
I'm really thinking of getting a semicolon ( ; ) tattoo. I know it's a fad right now, but it speaks deeper to me, than a fad normally does. The idea behind it, "A representation that the author could have ended the sentence there, but chose to go on," just rings really true with me.
Because I choose to go on and battle my depression every day. I choose to not give up, or even to give in.
"Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines."
-Richard M. Nixon
"Never give up; for even rivers someday wash dams away."
-Arthur Golden
So keep fighting the fight. Sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's bad.
Just keep moving forward.
-Jacq
I Love you
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