8 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.
After being strung along for another week, I decided to make a clean break with the new month and cut it off. I realized that I wasn't grieving the loss of the self-serving, uncommunicative, emotionally unavailable ass he'd become; I was grieving the loss of the way he was so very affectionate, caring and attentive when he was first infatuated with me, and how he made me feel so loved, cherished, appreciated, and beautiful. (After many years and many girlfriends, he's really got sweeping a girl off her feet down to a science). And I deserve someone who makes me feel that way all the time, not just until the infatuation wears off.
Yes, it's bitter and long-winded and I doubt he'll read it all, but it felt good to get out - and that's what matters.
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"If you love and care about someone, you aren't ambivalent about it. If you love and care about someone, you make room for them in your life; you don't shut them out (that is, except for when you feel like calling them). If you want to be with someone, you fucking talk to them; there's always time in a busy day for someone you love. Bottom line is: you don't want to be with me anymore.
"I just wish you'd been mature enough to own up to it, or decisive enough to come to terms with it, instead of stringing me along for weeks with ambiguous, contradictory messages and false hope. Instead of being straightforward you put me through hell (saying you just want to be friends BUT that I'm the one turning this into a breakup; that I shouldn't try to get over you BUT you like where you are right now without me in your life). You hoped that I'd 'get a clue' and just move on quietly, on my own, without you having to be bothered; a really passive-aggressive way to resolve things.
"I'm not being dramatic. I'm being an adult -- you know, being upfront, not playing games, and not running from interpersonal problems. I'm taking a stand, and saying you've wasted more than enough of my time already. I deserve better: peole who are emotionally available and dependable, and who want me in their life. (Also, it's not 'drama' for a woman to lose her mind when she's not getting straight answers from someone she gave her heart; it's the normal reaction of anyone being toyed with and strung along).
"For future reference. If your personal philosophy is that everyone handles their problems on their own, then don't tell a girl you want to take care of her; she might get the wrong idea and think you're serious. At the same time -- and in contrast to your philosophy of suffering alone -- constantly telling a girl what she 'should' do is not being helpful; I ask for advice and help thinking out a problem but not instructions on what I 'should' or 'need to' do, especially when you then complain of feeling 'drained' from assigning the course of my life.
"Do you realize that when you talked about your past relationships, you never once admitted even partial responsibility for the failure of any of those relationships? It was always the girl's doing. Swear to God, every time. (Boy, was that a red flag). It makes me sad to realize you won't perceive or accept any culpability for what went wrong.
"I forgot to get my house keys from you and I need them back, but right now I'm not expending anymore time or energy on this ridiculous bullshit. I'll call you 'later.'"
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.
My brother Gordon was hit by a car last night while riding his bike in Cambridge, but is doing okay. It was dark and rainy and sans sidewalk so instead of riding in the street he tried to get on an MBTA bus, but the bus had no bike rack and the driver wouldn't let him take it on board. Riding home, a car driver didn't see him, struck him from behind and apparently (according to what our half-asleep mom was able to tell me this morning) the bike swung around, he flew off and onto the hood of the car. Because God likes my brother (as well He should), an ambulance was driving by at that f-ing moment and stopped: Gordon has no head injury nor broken bones - just a serious injury to the knee that took the brunt of the hit - and declined to go to the hospital. I'm hoping to go see him tonight. After I go find that bus driver and shove the remants of my bro's bike up his ass.
In other news, my depression has been getting progressively worse over the last couple months... probably because I wasn't taking the full dose of my medication because I was trying to stretch it out as long as possible because I don't have health insurance and the meds cost $385 for a month's supply. I'm almost out, and called the DMH. Apparently, Massachusetts takes their policy of universal healthcare for every resident actually seriously, and I'm supposed to go to an ER with pay stubs and proof of residency and say "I have depression and panic disorder; I make less than $19,000 a year; I have no health insurance, am out of my meds, and this close to banging my head against a wall until my skull cracks." Okay, well, I wasn't instructed to say that last part, but let's mess with the hospital staff anyway. They'll sign me up for MassHealth Universal and give me meds on the spot. Thank you Massachusetts for helping take care of me.
In summation, today's to-do list is: crazy (literally!) fun at the emergency room; remnants of bicycle up bus driver's ass; big hug to little brother.
From Dooce
I have become depressed again. Almost as depressed as I was two years ago when I had to check myself into the hospital, and it has everything to do with stress, recent stress that has threatened to change and devastate our lives. I have often described depression as the complete inability to cope with stress, and although I think my own depression is manageable with medication — medication that I am still taking every day — it tends to flare up in a debilitating way when I’m thrust into very stressful situations. I keep trying to claw my way up out of this, but for the last month I have found it almost impossible to make it through the day without putting my face into a pillow and screaming until I cannot sense the world around me.
You deserve better than this, better than the look of absolute desperation I carry in my eyes all day long. I should be more playful, should sing more songs, color more pictures, but I’m sometimes afraid that if I attempt any of these things you will see through it and know that I am lying. Right now I can’t see the world in anything but shades of very pale gray. I had hoped that I would never find myself this low again — I would not wish this crushing emptiness on my worst enemy — but now that I am here I’m not quite sure what to do this time, except trust that you and your father will stick by me, will be here when I do feel better.
Two years ago, I became dangerously ill and my then-husband said, "I didn't sign up for this" (guess he missed that part in the vows about "in sickness and in health") and it cemented more than a decade of fears about my depression and my personal relationships. Usually I hermit - something that would be impossible when one has children - and hide away; when I was twenty, my best friend would show up in the middle of the night if she hadn't heard from me in a week just to make sure I was still alive and ticking. It's the worst thing: knowing that sometimes the depression will unavoidably, uncontrollably flare-up; knowing it won't be fair to my loved ones; fearing they will go away because of it, and not being able to blame them.
