by Band Back Together | Dec 1, 2010 | Bipolar Disorder, Coping With Depression, Major Depressive Disorder, Postpartum Depression |
I had tried to deny it throughout the months of November and December but it is now clear that I am once again going through another one of my depressive episodes. Honestly, I kind of expected it. These episodes have been happening since I was 15-years-old and even though some people in my life don’t fully understand why, they will continue to creep up and knock me (and any confidence I have) on my ass.
That’s just how it goes when you’re dealing with bipolar II disorder. It can be controlled but there is no cure. This is something I will have to manage for the rest of my life, like millions of others in this world. That thought both frustrates and saddens me. Frustrates me because oftentimes, especially during these episodes, I feel like a victim. Why did God choose this path for me? Saddens me because I just want to be a happy positive person but my brain chemicals won’t let me be who I want to be!
Since I can’t take medication right now I was holding out hope that my pregnancy hormones would ward off depression just as they did when I was pregnant with Landon. No such luck. But I am thankful that I have been through enough of these episodes to know the difference between a bad day and full-on depression. I am thankful that I have done enough therapy and research to recognize when getting better is beyond my reach.
I have all the classic symptoms, i.e. random spurts of crying, sudden internalized anger, unable to muster up enough energy to perform basic life skills (taking a shower, doing the laundry or dishes), loss of concentration, no desire to talk to or be around family members or friends. Basically feeling so overwhelmed with the thought of doing anything that I just plain can’t pull myself out of bed. Is that what you would consider a bad day? What if you felt like this for a week or an entire month?
I just want to note for any worry warts out there that I DO get out of bed. I DO take care of my son. I feed him, play with him, change his 12 diapers a day and hug and kiss him all day long. I’ll admit that sometimes I have to force myself to do it. But he is my greatest motivator. Sometimes I will roll out of bed at 5:30 a.m. even though I don’t want to because he is up and jibber-jabbering. I will walk into his room and see that huge grin on his face and suddenly I realize I’m actually smiling! Oops, wait, stop smiling Molly because you’re supposed to be depressed! I will sing our usual morning songs while changing him and getting him his milk. It’s nice to know that even though I am having a really rough time right now there is still sunlight in the shadows of this disorder.
One positive about having had this disorder for all of my adult-life is that I am armed with the perspective that I CAN and WILL get better. That’s why they are called “episodes.” I’m convinced that much of why I feel the way I do is circumstantial. Unexpectedly leaving my job (and my nice salary), rarely seeing Naaman because he has to work so much, trying to sell our house in a down market, and how about we throw an unexpected pregnancy in there? I am happy to have this surprise blessing in our lives and I feel certain this baby is here for a reason. But I am still pretty upset about the timing of it all. All of these circumstances at once could drive anyone to their breaking point. But someone like me who doesn’t come wired with the usual coping skills? It’s a recipe for disaster.
Blogging about my struggles and strengths with this disorder is something I think I need to do more of this year. Maybe it will help someone else out there to know that they are not alone. That you can manage motherhood AND mental illness successfully. I do realize that writing about this on my blog subjects me to the awful and unfair judgment of strangers. There are still so many in this world who don’t understand mental illness. They never will. They see it as a weakness or a fault. They see me as someone who doesn’t deserve a loving husband or a beautiful family. They assume that if I can’t be happy then I don’t deserve what I have. But they’re wrong. Just because I suffer from depressive episodes through no fault of my own does not mean that I don’t have the same right to happiness that everyone else does.
I desperately wanted to reach the same milestones as most everyone else. High school and college graduation, successful career, engagement, marriage, babies. I am still a human being with feelings and a heart and I am convinced that I deserve the same happiness as everyone else.
One misconception is that I can turn the depression switch on and off. That I can “snap out of it” or “get over it.” Oh, if it were only that easy. I do not choose to feel this way. I was born this way and had some horrible things happen to me when I was a teenager that exacerbated my symptoms. Do you think I don’t try to wish these feelings away every day? I would give anything if I could just snap my fingers and feel happy. I know what it is to be and feel truly happy. And I want those feelings back as soon as possible. But I’m smart enough to know that this won’t just disappear into the background. Not without regular therapy and medication. I suffered through many years of agony and the darkest pain before I was able to come to this realization. But now I can get help before I reach my lowest of lows.
It’s a New Year. 2010. There is so much to look forward to this year. A new little miracle will enter my life and I want so much to be ready to welcome him into the arms of a happy, more centered mama. I want to feel the unspeakable joy that I felt the day we brought Landon home. I don’t think I’ve ever smiled a bigger smile in my life than on the day when we came home and put him in his crib for the first time. I want that with B and I’m trying to remain hopeful that I’ll get that chance.
But right now it’s oh so tough. I am once again feeling resentful of tragic things that have transpired in my life. So much so, that I start to forget that my entire life sets within an hourglass. I have no way of knowing how much sand is left. All I want is to be grateful for every particle that falls to the other end because that means that God has given me another day. Not the ones that are still waiting to go through. Not the ones that have already fallen. I want to be grateful for the sands that are falling through the hourglass right now.
My next OB appointment is Tuesday. She knows all about my history with this disorder and is ready and willing to talk about treatment while I’m still pregnant. I will let you all know how it goes. I am hopeful that there is a solution for me so that I can get better. I am smart enough to know that I have to act now. I cannot wait until after B arrives. Thoughts and prayers are always welcome. Every good vibe sent my way helps a bit.
At the recommendation of my OB who was extremely supportive of antenatal depression I took a small dose of antidepressants and received weekly talk therapy. Brigham (Baby B) was born on May 2, 2010 to a happy, stable mama. Please talk to your OB. At the time of my pregnancy I thought there was no way I would ever be happy.
Antenatal depression exists.
Just know, you’re not alone in this struggle.
by Band Back Together | Dec 1, 2010 | Abortion, Abortion Recovery, Abuse, Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Infidelity, Major Depressive Disorder |
I can’t believe it has been 15 years since I meet him. There are days it feel like it was just yesterday. I knew his past – his Dad killed himself when he was young and he rebelled. He still did things that you would expect a troubled youth to do, but that stuffed seemed to stop once we started dating.
I can’t really complain about the first year and a half of the 3 years we were together. We were a normal, young couple in love. Everyone thought we were a happy couple. Then I got pregnant. It wasn’t planned, but I was young and “thought” I was in love.
That’s when you started telling me how worthless I was. It’s also when you started to hit me. A punch in the arm here. A shove there. Then you started with my stomach. Told me I was stupid and I wasn’t going to have this baby. You forced me to have an abortion, which in hindsight I am glad I did, mainly because I think if I had carried this baby longer, You would have made sure it didn’t survive.
I was no longer allowed to see my friends. I feel into a deep depression and was heart-broken when you broke up with me. What to do with all of this new found freedom? Take a trip with my BFF of course! Well, once you got wind of that, you had to have me back. Could it be the rumor that I was planning on moving with her to Florida, start a new life? Foolishly I agreed to meet you for lunch. I let you make me think you were truly sorry and wanted me back.
Things only got worse. I had a curfew, had to sneak out to be with my friends, could only do what you wanted me to do. The beatings and verbal abuse got much worse the second time around. I remember the time I picked you up from work at one in the morning in the city and you beat me in my own car because I was listening to a mix tape of songs that my favorite cover band played. A stranger came up to the window as you were banging my head into the car window. He said he was calling the cops and told me to get out of the car, that he’d help me. You stopped hitting me long enough for me to drive away, only to start punching me in the legs the whole ride home.
If I loved you enough, you’d stop, I told myself. You told me how much you loved me.
You were only doing this because it’s what your Dad did to your Mom.
I started sneaking out to go out with one of my BFFs. I started having fun again, feeling like myself again. I cheated on you. I found a great guy, at my favorite hangout, who I had known since high school. He worshiped me. He told me how smart, beautiful and fun I was. It gave me my confidence back.
I got the nerve to leave you. I made sure to do it when everyone was home at your Mom’s house.You proposed to me, told me you’d already asked your Mom for her engagement ring your Dad had given her. I took all my stuff out of her house and moved right in with my new boyfriend. I lived 10 minutes from you for 3 years and you never knew.
To this day I live with the scars you left me, physically and emotionally. I have been on and off anti-depressants for 10 years. I have panic attacks when I am reminded of a bad beating. I freak out when my husband tries to kiss me (like if I am leaning up against the counter & he blocks my way out). I feel trapped, yet I know he would NEVER lay a hand on me.
Luckily I found REAL love with my husband. I told him EVERYTHING you did to me and he still loves me. I am damaged goods, but he loves me anyway. You told me if I left you NO ONE would want me. I can count on one hand the number of people who know what you did to me, but I need to get it all out.
I was a silly, young girl who believed I could change you. I now know, that you were the one who changed me. Not because you loved me, because what we had WASN’T love.
You made me stronger, no I made me stronger.
I survived the hell you put me through.
by Band Back Together | Nov 28, 2010 | Coping With Depression, Divorce, Emotional Abuse, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Major Depressive Disorder, Self-Esteem, Suicide |
I was never going to write on here. I was going to comment and offer support… but I was never going to write about how I felt.
“It’ll go away later,” I’d tell myself. “There worse things out there in life than feeling down every now and then.” “Everyone gets overwhelmed this time of year.”
But then I wonder if it’s worse than that.
I’ve always been relatively smart. My elementary school wanted me to advance to 2nd grade during Kindergarten. I was in Beta Club and always enjoyed school. Then, in the 3rd grade, my parents split up.I vaguely remember an incident where my dad hit my mom. They got back together when I was in 6th grade. But, things weren’t going well.
We moved after 6th grade. My best friend had moved away a year earlier and I had a hard time making new friends in my new town. I was smart… and smart kids aren’t the cool kids. So, I dumbed myself down.
Things weren’t good at home, either. My parents were not happy and it showed. My mom had a meeting with my teachers my sophomore year to discuss my poor grades and my English teacher told her it was because I was bored with school. It was too easy for me, and I had given up. I had driven myself to the point that I actually told my mother that I wanted to kill myself. To this day, I cannot guarantee that it was an empty threat.
After we moved, everything about me changed. I became my mother… she gets upset too easily. She’s depressed. As far as I know, she’s not gotten help for it. She’s always telling me to stop getting “into tizzies.”
I’ve been in some bad relationships where I was used and cheated on and emotionally abused. I was called a “butterface” (everything is okay about her, but her face), ugly, and fat. I think the worst thing people made fun of me for was my nose. It’s on the larger side and now every time I look at myself in the mirror all I see is that damn nose. How it makes me far from perfect.
I’m engaged now and I love my fiance with all of my heart and I know he loves me, too…but there’s this voice that comes out every now and then and eats away at me. It says that he deserves someone beautiful and he’s going to find her and leave me. I trust that he loves me and won’t leave me… but that voice in my head won’t shut up.
The best way to describe how I feel is when you go to a store like Best Buy. And you go to the back of the store where all the TVs are, and you put each TV on a different channel and close your eyes. All those voices, all the things running through your mind – and I can’t make it stop.
I can’t even make simple decisions like what I want to eat for dinner. If I go to make a speech or presentation in class, I get so shaky I can barely stand up, let alone speak. In some classes I can’t understand the material, so I cry, and when Tony asks me what I don’t understand so he can help, all I can muster is, “I just don’t understand.”
What is the most important thing I don’t understand? Why I went from a smart, outgoing kid to someone who wants to hide in their room with the lights off.
And, then there are days when I feel great and nothing is wrong and I just say to myself, “it went away like usual. See? Everything is better. Sometimes people just get sad.”
Until that voice in the back of my head finds those remotes again
by Band Back Together | Nov 23, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Coping With Depression, Emotional Abuse, Infidelity, Loneliness, Major Depressive Disorder, Marriage Problems, Sadness, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem |
I have a fairly melancholy personality, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see the good things. Most days, I do see the good things. I revel in them. But I do have bad days. Maybe more than your average chipper wonder-girl, but not enough to be a ‘bad thing.’ Problem is, there are parameters around my life that make it difficult to have any bad days at all. And so on those days, I feel very, very alone. Today is one of those days. Today, I had to write. I’m not alone if I have words to keep me company. I don’t have to be scared if I can still be coherent. But really, I am alone.
I’m married, but I have no husband. He would rather spend time with his Facebook or his phone. Or his pillow. He doesn’t love me. He says he does, sometimes, but how could I ever believe him? He doesn’t like to kiss me. He only touches me when there’s no chance of anything more. I go for sex and get excuses, or yelled at, or worse, silence. Snores. When I’m upset, he goes to sleep. The self-proclaimed night owl can’t keep his eyes awake at 8:30pm if he thinks there’s something bugging me (or I’m feeling amorous). I have one bad day in months, and it’s further proof to him that we should never have kids, that I would be a terrible mother. As if I’m the one unable to care for someone else. The best birthday present he’s ever received is an email from his ex-girlfriend. At least, that’s what he told her. He doesn’t know I know that. I asked him about his favorite birthday present, and he said it was the concert tickets I just gave him. The ones I couldn’t afford, but I rubbed two pennies together to make happen. Because for some inexplicable reason, I love him, I believe in him, and I have hope for us. And for my next act, I will jump off a bridge.
I’m a sister and a daughter, but I have no family. They don’t understand me, and they put up a facade of attempt. It fails. They fail. Or maybe I’m the failure. Either way, they’ve fenced me out. And then criticize me for it. Do I deserve to be the black sheep? My guess is that if you met all of us, you’d wonder how I ended up the way I am. You’d wonder what they have to vilify me. You might tell me I’m better off being the black sheep, but I don’t feel better off. Not today.
I have friends, too, maybe, but none are nearby. None know me. Not the real me. Most days, I like it that way. There are only so many words I can share on any given day. And how do you maintain a friendship without words? Besides, I don’t even know myself right now, so how could I possibly expect someone else to? It gets a little lonely sometimes. Then again, people are self-absorbed, and they give bad advice. Last thing I need is someone telling me how they’d like to solve their problems, under the guise of my benefit.
I’m say a Christian, but I have no real faith. Belief, sure, but in what? Who is my God? I don’t know. He’s a stranger right now (he, or she, or it, or them…). As a recovering fundamentalist, I don’t understand God at all. I’d like to try better, learn more, figure out what was and what is true, but when it comes to God, there aren’t answers, just more questions. Questions, and narcissism. Funny how God’s attributes line up so nicely with your own opinions.
All in all, I have a great life. Sure, it’s lacking in some areas, but I have no shortage of things to be happy about. Most days, I’m happy. Content and smiling and good. I want more than good, though. I want more than a decent marriage, I want an out-of-the-park one. I want to be married to someone who cares about ‘us’ as much as I do. I don’t have that. I don’t have a spendthrift cheating drunk abuser, but I don’t have a true partner either. I want a family who doesn’t just love me but accepts me. I don’t have that either. I could sure use a friend, too. Someone I didn’t have to pretend with. Someone who could point out my own childish crap without making me feel guilty or condemned. Really, though, I just want some answers. About God. I used to have them, until I saw how lacking my perspective was.
Right now, during this bad day, lack is all I can see. And that is why, today, I hate myself.
by Band Back Together | Nov 22, 2010 | Coping With Depression, Major Depressive Disorder |
It was a cold winter’s night. The heater was working hard trying to remove the chill from the air, but I still felt frozen. We were whipping along the expressway at 80 miles an hour, but in my mind, everything was moving too slowly, weighted down by the sadness, the madness in my head.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
He groped to grab my hand in the dark. “Yes. Yes, you can. I’m right here. I’ll be here.”
I shrank back, trying to disappear into my seat. “No, you don’t understand. I really can’t. I can’t face it.”
We were on our way to dinner. With both sets of parents. Dinner with the parents, when everyone knew I was slowly going mad. Had watched as I took a baseball bat to everything that was good in my life and set about destroying it.
“You have to, Amber. They’re waiting for us.”
“But I’m brooooooooooken,” I howled through the sobs that suddenly overwhelmed me. “I’m broken and I can’t DO this.”
“What? What can’t you do?”
“This. Life. I just can’t, anymore. I can’t do it,” I said, then clutched my head hard enough to hurt and began to sob in earnest.
His hands turned white on the steering wheel, and I could tell he was struggling not to cry himself.
“Stop. Stop talking like that. We’ll get through this, together. We will. I promise.”
Again he reached out, and this time, I let him take my hand. Slowly, my sobs quieted, the agony once more retreating inside my head. When we got to the restaurant, I took a deep breath, stuffed the pain into its closet, and stepped out of the car.
We made it through dinner, his hand clutching mine under the table. Everyone ignored my red eyes. Pretended not to see when I bolted to the bathroom to cry. They forced their smiles and carried on with the celebration, determined to cling to a shell of normalcy.
As for me? I was dying inside. Sunk deep in a pit of depression so crushing that I could hardly breathe. I’d like to tell you that that was the worst of it. The end of it. But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
Before it was over, I had destroyed friendships, sabotaged my career,and dragged my husband to the darkest depths of Hell with me.
This is just one of many, many memories I wish I could erase. But I can’t. And that’s a good thing. Because they serve as a reminder—a warning. Now, when the symptoms start, I don’t ignore them. I slow down, reach out and ask for help.
I was lucky. I survived. Not everyone does. So if you think you might be depressed, don’t wait. Get the help you need.
It could mean the difference between living…and not.
by Band Back Together | Nov 13, 2010 | Adjustment Disorder, Coping With Depression, Major Depressive Disorder, Mental Health |
For the past few weeks, life has gotten the better of me.
Work and home have been hectic, but no more than normal.
Something else is wrong.
I’ve stopped blogging (until now, obviously). Twitter is all but a memory. I have 287 unread posts from some of the most amazing people that I can’t even find the energy to read. I haven’t really spoken to friends. My mum forgets my voice I’m sure, it’s been that long since I’ve called. I don’t read emails. I ignore my husband. I sleep through most weekends and can’t bring myself to leave the house at times.
I feel hurt. I feel empty. I feel like crying but lack the care factor to do so.
I don’t care.
Everyone’s always angry with me. I can’t do anything right.
I’m lost.
Again.
I’m so sick of feeling useless. Feeling guilty. Feeling angry. Disgusted with myself.
I’m sinking.
I’ve lost interest.
I’m struggling to find five minutes of peace to myself. It’s just not there. I don’t have any time. This post alone has taken me 4 hours.
I’m over everything. I’ve got nothing left to give.
There’s nothing left within me. No energy. No hope. Sometimes no love.
I don’t need help. I need space.
I don’t know about anything anymore.
Nothing’s certain.
