by Band Back Together | Aug 27, 2015 | Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Breakups, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Depression, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Loss, Major Depressive Disorder, Murder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Stress, Trauma, Violence |
A woman who has major depressive disorder decides to go back onto her medication:
This is her story:
Today, I decided to go back on anti-depressants. This is a battle I’ve waged for years; do I really need them, do they really help, are the side effects worth it, am I just a loser who can’t deal with life’s vagaries.
Last weekend I drafted a post that contained the line, I feel like a bucket brimming with tears, and the slightest, inevitable tremble of the earth makes them overflow. It’s an inelegant metaphor, but worse, it’s a pretty clear symptom that things are not going well. It’s partly a bad birthday, partly the break-up, partly some harsh health news. It’s mostly, if I’m honest, cyclical, recurrent, my noonday demon.
“Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.”
— Andrew Solomon
This is a family tradition; at the cousins’ table at last weekend’s wedding, we raised a toast to Lexapro and discussed having a candy bowl of all our meds on the coffee table of the rental house we’ll share at the next wedding. It’s funny, but it isn’t. Undiagnosed and untreated depression, manifested as alcoholism and other self-destructive behavior, blackens the family history like soot after a fire. Not everyone, not all the time, but too many, too often.
For me, it begins with a lack of resilience. My normal ability to adapt diminishes and diminishes until I can’t remember that I ever had it. Then, despite the pride I take in being self-aware, I start to judge my good life unworthy and tell myself that my unhappiness, my deep profound malaise that rips the joy out of each moment and shows me only the glaring photo-negative of each happy event, is actually the only sane and measured response to a terrible world and my own failures to strive against the terribleness. That’s the most insidious part, for me; my beautiful brain turns against me, whispering that I am correct in my assessment of my own awfulness and that I deserve to feel bereft, that my sadness is borne from clearly seeing the world and my own bottom-rung place in it. That the life that stretches before me will always be this bleak and hopeless, and that it’s my fault, and that I’m forever lost.
I mostly retain enough self-awareness to know how first-world self-pitying this sounds to anyone but me, but knowing that doesn’t combat my secret belief that it’s true.
My first episode of depression hit me during my fourth year of college. I was living by myself, and working two jobs, and so sad and overwhelmed that I began skipping classes to sleep and sleep, until I got so far behind that I saw no option but to quit. The rueful backstory here is that my parents had already yanked me out of my beloved city and school once, for financial reasons, and I had fought bitterly to return to the life I thought was rightfully mine. And then I ruined it. No one, myself included, ever thought my actions might be aberrant because I was ill; I was just a failure who fucked it all up.
“…a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn’t a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.”
— Andrew Solomon (The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression)
I’ve tried and tried to write about the beginnings of this last trough, when my sister’s boyfriend was shot and nearly killed on our front porch in 2006. Well, I have succeeded in writing about it–the awful terror and despair of the days and weeks that surrounded the event, and my subsequent PTSD and years of broken sleep and terrible anger–but I’ve failed to write about it in a way that is useful. It’s simply too raw and ugly still, and there is no happy ending, only pain and permanent disability and broken hearts. The long-term effects led to my worst low ever, eventually, and to an appointment with a psychiatrist where I wept uncontrollably and confessed that I was afraid to leave my house and afraid to stay home alone and at the bitter end of my ability to conceal how bad things were. I was scared that I would die, that I was broken in a way that could never be put right.
Medicine was a revelation, a silver bullet that lifted me up and out in weeks. I’d gone so far as to get a prescription for anti-depressants before, but never taken them. Once I started, within six months I’d launched a new business, gotten a promotion, found a new place to live, and started dating again.
And then in January I quit. I felt good, I was falling in love, I was emphatically not a person who would be on meds for the rest of her life. I wanted to be the plucky heroine of my own story who’d had some lows and left them behind. I didn’t want my dates to see the pill bottles. I didn’t want to be damaged goods.
But I don’t want to be mired in black sadness and self-doubt any more either. I’ve met so many people lately who are doing amazing things with their lives, and I’ve lost so much time already. I write this to remind myself that I have more to offer the world than I’ve been able to give, that the drum of failure and hopelessness inside my head can change its beat. I get a flash every once in a while of what my life could mean, of what I could accomplish with the talents and abilities I have, and I need to hold on to those images and walk toward them. If I have to pause in my march each day to wash down some false pharmaceutical courage, it’s a small price to pay.
by Band Back Together | Aug 21, 2015 | Abuse, Anger, Anxiety, Depression, Fear, Feelings, Infidelity, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Parenting, Psychological Manipulation |
As a you child I was very sensitive and very petite. My family saw that as a weakness and did what ever they could to put me down and make me feel bad about myself. Until a week ago, I always thought the biggest bully was my sister. She would physically and mentally abuse me. She had to control me in every way she could.
So in order to protect myself from this type of abuse, I grew up to only want one thing …to never feel anything ever again. I wanted to be able to turn my emotions on and off. I became very heartless, unloving, less sensitive, and kept to myself. I never shared my feelings, and I eventually despised the word “feelings.” It made me want to gag. I did achieve this goal. I trained myself so well to never feel anything at all. But I became depressed and had anxiety that increasingly got worse. My dad sent me to a therapist, blaming my mom and sister for the cause of all this.
After a year and a half of therapy, I finally realized my dad was the problem the entire time. It was in therapy where I first discovered gaslighting, and when I finally realized he did that to me, I was very upset. Then I was told he had the traits of a narcissist. As I read about that, I became enraged. I couldn’t believe my own father would do this to me for his own personal benefit. He let me believe for so long that there was something wrong with me.
My friends always loved my dad and mom and wanted them to be their parents. My dad was a different person around friends and my moms side of the family. During my parents divorce, my dad manipulated everyone into thinking my mom was to blame for the divorce, when my dad was the one cheating. He had us all fooled for a personal, manipulative game.
My friends always wondered why I acted so different around adults compared to how I was with my friends. I just acted like it was a good girl act, but even I didn’t know why I ever did it until now. I never knew how much my dad controlled me with his narcissistic ways. And I just makes me so angry that I want to punch a hole through the wall.
My dad always says that he loves me more than I’ll ever know, and I broke his heart every time I tried to stay with my mom. It’s all a mind game with him, and it just blows my mind. It makes my even more angry that I never had a normal childhood because of him. I had to grow up too fast and be more mature than anyone I knew. He controlled my personality, and therefore, I could never be my true self. Even now, knowing all this, I am still too afraid to confront him. I’m too afraid to never see him again for what he might do.
by Band Back Together | Aug 18, 2015 | Bullying, Depression, Loneliness, Sadness, Self Loathing, Shame |
Untreated depression leads to chronic depersonalization” would be a meaningful statement if you meant something, but you mean nothing.
You are not a hardy child of Appalachia; stop wasting your days listening to bluegrass playlists, pining for a time that will never exist. You are weak. People wade through hells far deeper than this one, the soles of their feet scorched but their ankles held intact. But your tendons are peeling like the stalk of a pineapple, the skin on your knee burnt off to display brittle bone, graham cracker bone, bone of yarn, bone of string cheese.
Stay inside where neighbors cannot see the grotesque state of your legs. Stay inside where you cannot chant for them: gooble-gobble, one of us.
Do you want to know what a real person looks like? Don’t skip class this week. Arrive late and sit in one of the satellite desks. Never learn what Marx said. Observe the others mid-digestion and covet their hairlines, their builds. Sketch a series of concentric circles and keep your head down, because you are not a scholar, you are a machine, you are an alarm clock, you are a Disney Channel original series, you are just a paideia, you are mendacity itself. Masturbate for me; you deserve the shame of an amputee juggler on a unicycle, you deserve the shame of a hapless fourteen-year-old YouTube celebrity. Look around you and tell me if any of the people you see had to order their bootstraps off the Silk Road. Every waste of Bitcoins is melancholy, o destitute child, they don’t weave bootstraps in your size.
What you are going to need is a course of Paxil. It is a medication that, by the miracle of contemporary science, will make it easier for you to be worthless. You will be glad to have taken it, as it will make you scream less and sleep more. It will take your ragged canyon and level it out into mesa, and then it will take your mesa and build a timeshare resort. Paxil is an electric fence between banality and suicidality. Paxil is the opposite of filthy, passionate fucking. The instructions on the back of the bottle tell you to stream amateur porn and look at the way they want each other, then take down two pills with a light snack. You are going to forget, but don’t forget: you have to be beautiful to be hired as a caricature artist at the renaissance fair. Don’t forget, you have to do your laundry more often than you do now.
by Band Back Together | Aug 13, 2015 | Anxiety, Depression, Fear, Healing From A Rape or Sexual Asault, Rape/Sexual Assault, Violence |
This only happened to me a few weeks ago, and I am still trying to find ways of coping with what happened to me. I am hoping that sharing my story and writing it out will also help my mental state at the moment.
I already suffered with severe anxiety and depression before this had happened so have already suffered through some traumatic experiences already. However, this is my story.
I am 20, a university student, and generally enjoy my life. Even though I do live with mental health issues I never really let them over-rule my life.
Being students, we decided to go on a night out. I wasn’t drinking as my friend was already excessively drunk, and I was keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. A couple of hours later, we were still out enjoying our night. He had found some lad to dance with and spent the majority of his evening with this boy and me. I went to the toilet, trusting that he would wait for me, so that we could get a taxi home. I came out of the toilet and he had gone, I searched both rooms in the club to try and find him or any other of the group of friends I was out with. I couldn’t see any of them.
I went outside to see if anyone was outside smoking. No one was in sight there either. I then went to call everyone I was with to try and find someone, so I remained outside. I started to panic slightly. Absolutely no one was answering their phones and most of their phones were turned off.
I again began to panic. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get home as one of my friends had my bank card with them. I had no cash on me either. I then began to text my friend, who hadn’t come out with us, to ask if he could pick me up. He agreed, but said he was going to be over an hour. At this point, it was around 5am, and everyone started to leave the club. I was standing at the end of the street, where I told my friend I would meet him when he came to pick me up.
A male approached me as I was having a cigarette to ask if he could have one. I said yes, and he stuck around to talk. He seemed genuinely lovely. He then realized that I was alone and began getting friendly. I politely asked him not to, but he kept on insisting that it was fine. He then asked if I wanted to go back to his house. I again politely declined the offer, as I was waiting for my friend to pick me up.
A taxi then pulled up shortly afterwards. He walked back over to me, I thought to say goodbye, but instead, he said to me I had no choice as he wasn’t leaving me alone. When I tried to push him away, he picked me up and threw me into the taxi. In the area that we were in, the taxi drivers tend to ignore their clients, regardless of what was happening, so I knew I would get no help from the driver.
We then arrived at his house, and I had no idea where we were, I felt really scared. I thought about running away from him when we got out of the taxi, but I wouldn’t know where to run to or where to go. I also started panicking about how I would get away.
He then proceeded to drag me into his house. He walked me to the living room and told me to sit on the sofa and not move until he came back. While he was gone, I started looking for his address to let my friend know where to pick me up. His cat was staring at me whilst I was doing this. I found a letter and really quickly sent a text to my friend. He returned, and I hid my phone as quickly as I could. He asked me what I was doing, and I didn’t reply.
He then threw me onto his sofa and took my underwear and skirt off. He gagged me with a tie that he had just gone to get, so that I couldn’t scream or shout. After around 10 minutes, he stopped and told me to follow him to his bedroom. He told me that if I didn’t do what he said, he was going to hurt me, so I followed his instructions. He continued to rape me in his bedroom. After around another 20 minutes, he told me to clean myself up and leave. I ran into the living room to put on my clothes, and just at that moment, my friend called me to say he was outside. I tried to act completely normal, like nothing had happened, when I left the house and got into my friends car.
I continued pretending like nothing had happened until I spoke to my tutor. She could see something wasn’t quite right. I had become really angry and extremely quiet. I didn’t cry when I told her what had happened. I still haven’t cried. I have become emotionally numb and tried to block out this situation.
I don’t know how to face this.
by Band Back Together | Aug 5, 2015 | Abandonment, Abuse, Bullying, Depression, Domestic Abuse, Fear, Intimate Partner Rape, Psychological Manipulation, Rape/Sexual Assault, Trust, Unemployment |
I am a victim of domestic violence and almost every form of intimate partner abuse that you can name.
Through my therapy, I have heard of “White Knight Syndrome.” This is when a person has a naturally good nature and wants to protect people in danger and people in need. My ex knew that I was an instinctively good person and would help those that I could, the elderly lady that fell off a bus, the disabled man that asked for help to get up the stairs, someone being attacked on the street, a victim of domestic violence, a victim of rape.
She knew, and she took advantage of it. She claimed she was raped one night. She claimed that someone was bullying her because she was a woman. She said that she was unfairly sacked because her boss was racist. She would say anything she could to try and get a reaction out of me, anything to prove to herself that she had control over me by having me fix whatever problem she created.
If I didn’t beat up the rapist, she would say I was controlling.
If I didn’t side with her against her bullying friend, she would say I wasn’t letting her go out.
If I didn’t have a go at her boss for being racist, I was called the racist.
None of this added up to me. Her friends would call me and say I should let her go out, even though she was out with them every week. My friends started threatening to beat me up for something I apparantly did to her whilst I was at work. People started threatening me and attacking me all the time. When I’d ask her if she knew what was happening, she’d deny it.
This is where I knew she was lying.
Not once, not ever, in all times I was beaten did I get a hug, or a kiss, or any empathy, sympathy, or pity from her. When I walked in with my leg nearly broken, she shrugged it off. I went to the hospital alone. When I was threatened, she would just turn the other way and go back to watching something on TV. I gave up telling her. I would either be ignored, or worse, she would deliberately walk away and call me weak for being upset, depressed, down, low.
I was more scared of telling her that I was battered with a pole through fear that this would give her satisfaction. I was terrified of telling her that someone nearly broke my leg. Instead, I told her I fell over. I kept hiding the injuries caused by what she was doing to me. I was hiding the number of times she’d had me battered for something as simple as asking her to sweep up whilst I cooked and cleaned the dishes.
Now when someone tells me that they have been raped, I worry that they might be lying, and I’m going to be manipulated again. I worry I will find myself stuck in a place where I know my heart tells me to protect this person, but my mind is telling me to keep myself safe.
For a very long time, I was running from pillar to post trying to protect the person that I loved, without destroying my own life. I eventually started letting the police deal with it.
That’s when the truth came out.
She wasn’t raped. She arranged to meet up with him because I wasn’t dominant enough.
She wasn’t wrongfully sacked by a racist boss. She had her final disciplinary action because she refused to do her job countless times, and she damaged clients’ property.
She wasn’t being bullied. She wanted to hide the fact that she had stolen money.
The list goes on and on.
Anyone can be in danger of false accusations. The people like me who have suffered forced penetration (that’s what they call it when a man is drugged and raped by a woman) don’t come forward until it’s too late. None of us have the courage to face disbelief from others for what we have suffered.
To all the women out there who are victims of rape, I am sorry for you all.
To all the men who are victims of domestic violence, I am sorry for you all.
I know how hard it is to fear disbelief because I have faced disbelief.
I have had to relive my abuse over and over again with every time I tell someone what happened. Over and over again, I feel scared that the person I’m telling is going to point at me, laugh at me. I’m scared that they will disbelieve me even, when shown the evidence, even when hearing the truth from my abuser, even after becoming a victim of it themselves.
by Band Back Together | Jul 24, 2015 | Abuse, Adult Bullying, Alcohol Addiction, Anxiety, Bullying, Child Abuse, Compulsive Eating Disorders, Depression, Infidelity, Loneliness, Self-Esteem, Stress, Suicide, Violence |
The name is Kat, and I’m a 29 year old college graduate. I feel bad about being so “big” and still being bullied. I thought it was something that just happens to kids and teens, but thanks to The Band, I’ve felt a little more comfortable admitting that yeah, I’m 29 and I’m still being bullied.
My parents have always had problems. When I was smaller, they would get into huge, violent fights that would end up in them beating each other (mostly my dad towards my mother) and cussing at each other. My two younger sisters and I grew up in a very violent atmosphere but were always close.
We also lived with our grandparents in the same house, and they would defend us a lot from my parents’ rage. My dad was an alcoholic and cheated on my mother. She would take it out on my sisters and me, mostly on me, since I was the one that always talked back to her, protecting my sisters.
Thanks to the constant abuses, I grew up insecure about myself. I was actually pretty creative, but also very violent. The slightest insult towards me, and I would attack other kids. Whenever my mom and I fought, I would feel the need to eat, so I was a little chubby. That got me bullied even more.
Back home, my mom used to beat my sisters and me with a wooden flat stick, saying that the Bible told her to “correct” her children like that. Aside from that, she would slap, choke, and punch me in the face, in many of our confrontations.
As a teen, I had a lot of trouble with authority and got into many fights with kids, claiming they only wanted to hurt me. My first boyfriend went to jail, and I changed universities a lot.
At 23, I had enough, and left the house. I got a great paying job and moved into an apartment, away from my mother. Once out, I got thin, got a new wonderful boyfriend and had a “perfect” life. But I still wanted to finish my career, which meant I had to quit my job, go back home, find another job that allowed me to study, and get into college once again.
Back home, I got chubby again. My mother constantly fights with me and tells me she doesn’t want me in her house. She values the pet more than me since she tells me that if her pet is sleeping on my bed, I’m not allowed to push her off. Sometimes I can’t sleep because of it. Her new husband shouts at me and loves getting me in trouble with her. I had to fight and struggle through college because of the stress at home.
I graduated three months ago, and I’m desperately looking for a job, so I can get out of this hell. My mom and I fight at least four times a week, and she always tells me to get the fuck out of her house. I have nowhere to go. I don’t want to involve my friends in this, and my father has another family. I’m desperate, I feel lonely, I lost my boyfriend, and she and her husband are constantly bullying me.
It may sound horrible and harsh, but its the truth. It took me 29 years to figure out why I eat compulsively. Just now, we had another fight. As soon as it ended, I raided the fridge, even though I wasn’t hungry at all. It’s not about filling “the void,” its about the desperation and anxiety I feel that make me want to eat like crazy.
However, I still remain strong. I wish for you gentle people who read my story to stay strong. I may be a little depressive, but I’m not suicidal. I love life and I want to move on. I know there are many amazing things waiting for me, and I just have to go ahead and do them.
Thanks for reading my story.
