Humpty Dumpty

It's no secret to most people in my circle that I have a blog. As a matter of fact, I have had a blog for about five years now. The URLs have changed, but I've never not had a blog since 2001. I'm not into sharing the URL with people I know, because that tends to make me censor myself.

Yeah. Censor myself, like I'm doing right now.

I have always loved Blogger and never wanted to leave it. I only did because I wanted to be able to password protect, and now there's Blogger Beta which lets me do so.

I was Texas Heifer before, but I don't feel like trying to be funny to hide pain anymore. So I thought...why shouldn't I start a blog that I can share with everyone (everyone meaning family and friends, all)? Why not? So many people have been picking my brain, I might as well just lay it all out there for you guys. No use being shy about it, and maybe I can open some minds in the process.

I was diagnosed with Major Depression nearly 3.5 years ago. I'd suspected it for a while, and my friend Debbie was the first to point out the possibility to me; since she has it herself, she was aware of the signs. I thought (despite the neverending weight problem) that I was relatively normal, basically stable. It took quite a while for the idea to sink in...probably a few years, actually. Even such a short time ago, the stigma surrounding depression was unbelievable. I didn't believe I had it. I was told I was a textbook case, put on Lexapro, and expected magic to follow--happiness I had never experienced! I waited for peace of mind that never came.

I don't know when it started. I'm guessing around age 10. All I know is that, up until this past July, I didn't believe I had a problem. I didn't believe anything was truly wrong with me. I spent years telling people I was depressed--my mom said I talked about it like it was a badge of honor or something--in an effort to make myself believe this thing not only existed, but I had it. I have it. It's here.

On July 5 of this year I woke up and I knew I could not go to work. I have wondered, in the past, about friends who were so depressed they couldn't get out of bed. I never understood it until that moment. I just felt like I'd been born broken, and for the past 31 years I have been struggling to hold myself together, to be strong, to be that person who pulls herself up by the bootstraps like my dad is always wanting me to do. What people who don't have this don't understand is that there are no bootstraps. You can't pull yourself up by the bootstraps if there aren't any.

That was Thursday. I went to the doctor. I begged for something to help with the anxiety. I told my doctor I wasn't depressed, just anxious. The irony there is that I had never been more depressed. She prescribed xanax and a referral to a psychiatrist. I made an appointment with a therapist, my first. The therapist sounded absolutely dotty on the phone, but I had to give her a shot.

I kept thinking, "I am falling apart. I cannot hold this together anymore." I can't tell you how much that scared me. It wasn't melodrama, it wasn't me being a baby. It was real and it was devastating, and I didn't know how to go on.

Over the weekend, I moved to a new apartment in an unfamiliar part of town. Hurray for stress! I thought I was going to die. Take the panic of worrying about living alone, the crushing uncertainty of whether or not I would be able to support myself on my paltry salary, and the overwhelming feeling that, at any moment, everything was going to come crashing down around me, combine them with a bad reaction to an antidepressant and the sensation of slogging through life like it was glass-filled mud, and you might have some inkling of how horrid that weekend was.

On Monday, I thought about ways to die. I thought a lot about drowning. I didn't want anything painful, just...to stop existing, because that type of pain is intolerable. It's like being unable to breathe, like going through life with a pillow over my face. I spent a lot of time in a dark room, reading. I slept when I could manage to turn my mind down, when I could stop worrying long enough for sleep to take me. I did not want to wake up and was always disappointed when I did.

I switched antidepressants. I was on Wellbutrin at the time, and it was rather obvious (after it was pointed out, of course--I was too depressed to figure it out on my own) that it was having the opposite effect. My downward spiral was actually quite startling, as it happened within a space of a couple of months.

I stayed away from my super-depressing job for sixteen days, and went back feeling much better. Still hadn't seen a psychiatrist, but things were relatively stable. The xanax helped, though I wanted to smack my doctor, who bitchily informed me through his nurse that he would not refill my prescription again until I had another office visit. I told the nurse that I had an appointment with a psychiatrist, and had enough xanax to last me until then if I just took one a day. Inside I was desperate for someone to believe me. Would no one understand that I needed help? Now I completely understand why some people use such drastic measures, e.g. suicide attempts, as a cry for help. Apparently it takes an overdose or an open vein to open peoples' eyes--THIS IS NOT AN ACT, FOR GOD'S SAKE. It was scary how close I came to having to do that myself. I am lucky in that my mother noticed my withdrawal...significantly worse than last summer's and without any broken bones, but I could not stop crying and I could not stop wishing I was dead. Don't tell me to just stop it. I can stop it as easily as I can stop cancer.

I saw the psychiatrist on August 16. Diagnoses were: Major Depression (Dysthymic), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (from my year teaching), social phobia, severe anxiety and adult ADD.

Dude, I am about as effed up as anyone could be. At that moment of diagnosis I was both terrified and relieved. Now people had to believe me when I said I CAN'T FUNCTION.

Funny how people still don't believe. It's like having a phantom illness, or being possessed. People look at you weird, but since they can't see the sick, they don't think it's really there.

My dad still doesn't, though he's trying. My mom has asked to come to therapy with me sometime so maybe it will help her understand. Maybe it will. I hope it does.

Recently, my parents were talking about my dad getting his heart meds refilled. He needs to see a doctor before they will give him another prescription, and he joked about just not taking the medication until after football season. Quite understandably, my mother vehemently protested, and in an attempt to highlight the necessity of the drugs, I said, okay, you stop taking yours and I'll stop taking my Zoloft.

He looked right at me and said, "I don't care."

That proved to me, right then, that he thinks my medication is something I can take or leave. It's something I myself have struggled with, so I can understand; but it tells me that he's not taking this as seriously as he should. I looked back at him and told him he should care. My mom jumped in with a comment about not taking her hormones, and then the subject was dropped; however, I can't help but wonder what it's going to take for my illness to be taken seriously. I wonder how I'm ever going to deal with it properly if my close family members don't even really believe that I am sick, that this isn't an act or a joke, that this isn't something I'm just going to get over--not even with the little pills, not even with therapy. Those can help, and they are helping, but I'm going to have to live with them forever. There is no cure for this.

The fact that my father doesn't care whether or not I continue taking a medication that could prevent me from taking my own life stung a little bit, honestly.

So who does care? My mom does. My mom is taking this very seriously. At least three suicidal episodes in little more than two months have made her a believer, even if she can't understand.

And really, that's all I can ask. Because if you haven't had this, you can't understand. You just can't. It's an illness. You can't understand how much the flu sucks until you've had it. You can't understand the terror of facing cancer if you've never been there. I know what it's like to have the flu and I don't know what it's like to have cancer, but both of those illnesses exist.

So does depression.
So does post-traumatic stress disorder.
So does social phobia.
So does anxiety.
So does ADD.

Believe it.

I used to believe that people who committed suicide went to hell. I'm not so sure anymore, but I want to believe that God would not abandon people in such extreme pain that they chose death to escape it, much less send them somewhere to burn. More and more I think that this life is the real hell, and that's comforting to me, in a way. I get through this life and then all the hurt is over.

I have to ride it out, though. I promised my mom I would be okay.