5 posts tagged “depression”
I've been gone. It's been bad.
There was a relationship. And a break up. A bad, bad, bad... bad, bad, baaad break up. And lots of drinking. There was also moving twice, and losing two family members, and getting another tattoo, and a couple more piercings, and losing a couple piercings, and spraining an ankle, and having a birthday, and making new friends, and honestly - no, honestly - laughing more often then crying.
Maybe I'll do this again. The vox, I mean. Definitely not doing the last six months again.
There are very few people in my life who understand (or try to) my mental health issues, and whom I know would take care of me if (and when) I become sick. The three people I can turn to are all women and all have varying degrees of mental illness themselves. People who have no personal experience with it usually dismiss it completely. It's hard to get someone to understand: I've been told - by intimate partners - that I could think my way out of it, that "everybody gets the blues" and I was buying into false medicine. It's hard enough to explain it when I'm okay, let alone when I'm trapped in the darkness, groping for a hand to help pull me up.
Chris Rose is an editorialist for the Times-Picayune and his article Hell and Back really gets it right. It's the frank confessional of someone who never believed in depression as an illness and then suffered from it terribly after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.
Before I continue this story, I should make a confession. For all of my adult life, when I gave it thought -- which wasn't very often -- I regarded the concepts of depression and anxiety as pretty much a load of hooey.
I never accorded any credibility to the idea that such conditions were medical in nature. Nothing scientific about it. You get sick, get fired, fall in love, get laid, buy a new pair of shoes, join a gym, get religion, seasons change -- whatever; you go with the flow, dust yourself off, get back in the game. I thought anti-depressants were for desperate housewives and fragile poets...
"But when you have the thousand-yard stare, when your ability to function is impaired, then you have gone from 'discomfort' to 'pathologic.' If you don't feel like you can go anywhere or do anything -- or sometimes, even move -- then you are sick."...
I have a disease. Medicine saved me. I am living proof.
This article also quotes "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness" by William Styron, a great book to read for insight into the ill mind.
Getting gas this morning, the guy at the pump in front of me had a sticker on his truck that read, "SMILE! God is watching!"
And I seriously almost walked up and slapped him in the face.
This parody of Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback" is the story of my life right now. It's almost not even funny. Depressed over money? Check. Begging doc for scripts? Check. Staring at the wall? Check. Mattress on the floor? Check, check, check.
Gordon ended up going to the ER last night too, after a bike messanger who'd been hit by cars 30 times warned him about slipped discs and whatnot. He was most concerned about his elbow, since he's a musician and it would affect his ability to continue playing. They took X-Rays and he's fine. What a stud.
I, however, waited seven hours to see a doctor and only when the agoraphobia kicked in (what with all the people running around, the screaming baby, the angry yelling guy, the meth head who thought she was at an NA meeting, the nurses talking about zombie movies, etc) and I tearfully told the psych nurse to just "give me my f*cking medicine so I can go home." There was a Brazilian tourist who came in for Xanax (Xanax! ZAN-f*cking-AXE!) and she was in and out with her meds in three hours. Wish I'd known asking for the good stuff was the ticket to speedy service - because I love nothing more than a shot of Atavan.
Instead, we have Lady Sovereign.
