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Getting Sucked Into The Black Hole Again

by | Oct 7, 2010 | Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, How To Cope With A Suicide, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Major Depressive Disorder, Sadness, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem, Suicide | 9 comments

I’ve battled depression since I was a teen. I didn’t know what it was until late into my twenties. I just felt as if something was wrong with me or like I was a bad person.

I’ve been on medication for the last year. It was working. Working really well. My mood had greatly improved. I was no longer hearing a baby cry random times of the day. My anxiety had lessened. But the last couple of months it’s stopped working. I thought I was just in a funk. It happens from time to time. When I’m in a funk, I feel down and I lose all interest in housework, my kids, my husband, and my life in general. The one thing that keeps me going is school. I love going to school. I love doing the homework. It gives me purpose.

I started to feel down this summer.

I don’t have any friends. People say “you must have some friends,” but the truth is: I haven’t had a friend in over 10 years. When I met my husband it was wonderful. He was my friend and that was all I needed. Truthfully, I think I need more friends. I need someone to connect with. Someone to talk to besides him. I hate this feeling of being alone. I know my anxiety keeps me from talking to people and I need to work on it.

I was in therapy the first seven months that I was taking my medication. My counselor thought I was doing wonderfully. I wanted to be doing wonderfully. But the truth is, I was still having anxiety. Anxiety about leaving the house. About meeting new people. About about being a good enough parent or spouse.

I’m back to the dark place. I’m having thoughts of suicide again. Sometimes, I think sometimes everyone would be better off without me. I’ll think of how easy it would be to wreck my car while I’m driving to school so everyone would just think it was an accident.

I know I need to change my meds again. I need to call and set an appointment up. But I have anxiety about that, too. I don’t want to admit I am a failure. That once again I am not okay. And I worry, what if they don’t believe me? What if I am just overreacting?

What if I get in to see the doctor and I don’t have enough courage to say what I’ve said here?

(ed note: why don’t you bring this post in with you if you’re afraid you can’t talk about it? Any doctor will take you seriously.

Much, much love. Please remember that suicide is never, ever the answer. The Dark Place is a place that many of us have been before. There is hope.

If you are seriously considering suicide, this is the phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline:

1-800-273-8255

Please know that you are loved. And you are never alone.)

The Little Pills Again

by | Sep 28, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Coping With Depression, Depression, Loneliness, Major Depressive Disorder, Mental Health, Stress | 7 comments

Depression often lies to us, tricking us into going off our much-needed medications.

This is her story:

I wanted to see how I could be without the Prozac. So did my therapist. I had been on it for about 7 years – the same 20 mg dosage the whole time. My therapist openly disapproved of the medication. So I self-weaned off. I felt great for the first few weeks. Then the depression set in. It was mild at first. Just moodiness and more yelling. Then it would lift and life would be great. The cycles went like that for a while. Then there was The Week From Hell.

I ignored my husband completely. I did the bare-bones necessities to get through the day. I did not want to see friends or family. I didn’t want to do anything. I cried all the time, about nothing. I was never like this before. I wanted to eat salmon (which I am severally allergic to) so my throat would close and I would die. Nothing brought me joy. Nothing.

I didn’t talk about this with anyone. When I mentioned suicide to my therapist, he didn’t even blink or comment. This threw me into a greater depression. You know you are doomed when even your therapist doesn’t care.

My husband cried and said he wanted me to talk to him. I told him it didn’t help to talk. I needed medication. So I made an appointment with a psychiatrist (my previous Prozac came from my OB/GYN as medication to handle PMS). It took weeks to get in.

Even though I had been battling depression for years, this was the first time I ever saw a psychiatrist. She was very nice and knowledgeable. She went through all the background questions. When she asked about family history, I laughed and asked how much time we had. She nodded in understanding.

Her diagnosis was that I had mild depression that could go into a severe depressive state if I didn’t medicate myself. She said that since the Prozac did work for me without any side effects that she was putting me back on it, going from 10 mg up to 30 mg gradually.

Today I am at the 20 mg dosage. I feel pretty good. However, my darkest swings are 1-2 weeks before my period, which is still a while away. I am worried that the Prozac won’t be enough anymore. The psychiatrist said there are other similar medications I could take if Prozac didn’t do the job.

I am also worried that I am putting my trust too much into a pill. Why can’t I just be happy? I look at the people around me who smile and laugh and have it all, and want to be like them. But I am just not a happy person. Never have been, and probably never will be.

So I say, Hello Prozac my old friend…. I’ve come to take you again.

A Light At The End Of The Tunnel

by | Sep 15, 2010 | Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Depressive Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Mental Health | 4 comments

Sometimes, the act of talking to someone and taking action is all we need to find hope.

This is her story of hope:

I went to see my doctor yesterday for major depressive disorder. He sat and listened. He took my problems seriously. He even asked me if I thought I should be hospitalized. He talked about what a loss my children would have if I was gone and how they would blame themselves. It made me stop and pause. I listened.

He added another SSRI to the two medicines I currently take.

I have hope now.

Hope that I will make it through this. Hope that the new medicine will help me cope with all the craziness in my life. And it feels good to have hope. It is something to hold on to.

I met with my counselor as well. She wants to see me more regularly to help me through this. It feels good to have someone want to help me fight through this fog of depression – to help me find the light. She helped me see that all this anxiety is in my head and when the anxiety and the depression get together, it’s not as bad as I make it out to be. I take other people’s actions too personally. My kids aren’t trying to escape me; they just want to spend some time with their dad. Even though it hurts me, it’s not personal.

That gives me hope that someday I will be able to differentiate between what is reality and what I am imagining or reading into the situation.

I don’t know if my marriage will make it, but I have a feeling that no matter what, I will be able to make it through to the other side. I will be okay. No matter what, I have my kids and I have my goals.

We all will be able to make it to the light and live to see another day.

Damaged Goods

by | Sep 14, 2010 | Coping With Depression, Healing From A Rape or Sexual Asault, Major Depressive Disorder, Rape/Sexual Assault | 4 comments

Last year, my youngest daughter got a strange rash the day before my birthday. I took her to the ER that day because her doctor was “too busy to deal with a rash.” She was diagnosed with shingles *ewww* and I called my mom and arranged for her to take my two oldest so that they didn’t get sick. Also I wanted to catch up on my Netflix and I knew the baby would be sleeping. (Woot!)

My birthday came and went, and my husband and I decided not to celebrate.

Five days later my husband decided he was going to go out with some of his buddies. I admit to being a little upset about it, since I hadn’t been out in months. I picked up a good bottle of wine, put the baby to sleep, and got a little tipsy, before passing out in bed. I woke up sometime later to hear banging on the door. My husband habitually lost his keys while drinking so I stumbled down the stairs and pulled the door open to let him in so I could go back to sleep.

It wasn’t my husband.

I was sprayed in the face with what I believe was Lysol and got a good bash to my head. Luckily,I don’t remember much of the whole incident. When my husband came home he found the door open and I was lying on the floor in the living room with my clothes ripped off and a vacuum cord wrapped around my neck, thankfully unconscious.

Our then three year old was sleeping in an upstairs room, blessedly undisturbed. My mom came over and an ambulance took me to the hospital. I don’t remember much of this either because they had to sedate me since I wouldn’t stop screaming. After a lot of persuasion, I agreed to letting the police do a rape kit. At that point, I didn’t understand what was happening but I was scared and HURT. I felt violated and I didn’t want anyone to touch me.

They sent me home with ice packs, Valium, and a drug called Combivir, just in case my attacker had HIV. On top of the physical and mental stresses my body was already going through, the Comibivir would give me the same symptoms as someone undergoing chemo. I would be sick, and lose my hair, among many other side effects. My mom and sister decided that they would take the kids for the two months that I would have to take the medicine.

My husband and I banded together for the first time ever. He found us a new apartment because I didn’t feel safe in ours. His parents came up to help us move.

I spiraled into a depression. I soaked in it. Two months turned into my mom taking the kids for almost a year. We moved again because I couldn’t stand being in our city anymore. I still had problems getting out of bed. My husband didn’t want me to take anti-depressants because he wanted me to get better on my own and he saw the meds as a crutch. We fought. He cheated. I became more depressed. It hurt to talk to my kids, to let them see me because I’d lost a lot of weight and I looked like shit – to put it bluntly.

I contemplated suicide, and I finally found rainn.org, and their virtual counselors. I talked to someone every day, sometimes several times a day. I stopped taking two Valium an hour and started eating without the fight from my husband.

I still dream about it most nights. I still get horrible feelings whenever I smell Lysol. I still don’t feel sexy, but since then it’s almost like I crave sex. I want it more than ever. I’m sure if my husband knew that my new found randiness was due to the fact that I wanted to erase everything else, he would stop having sex with me.

I know that rape happens to millions of women but I still feel alone; I still feel like damaged goods.