What you can do

Now you know and love someone with depression. I’m not the first or last person you will love who has a bout with severe depression. This may not be my last go around with depression either. I’m doing pretty darn good now, but I have days when I see how easy it would be to slip back into deep dark days. I’d like to give you a few parting thoughts on this disease.

-Nothing you did made me depressed! It’s not your fault that I’m sick, and it’s not your responsibility to make me better.

-I need you. I’ll have moments where I don’t feel that I deserve your love, respect or even time. I’ll feel like I’m just going to pull you down into the mire with me. Don’t let go of me. Hold me tight. Keep me in your life and in your heart. I’ll push you away, or avoid you, but more than anything I need you to hold on tight while I go through this storm. I may not want you to intrude, but I need you to pester me and keep me connected with you and the world.

-Do not call anti-depressants ‘happy pills.’ Prozac does not make me happy. If I were the tin man, from the Wizard of Oz, then Prozac is my oil can. It makes my brain work smoother, and I need it regularly so I don’t get all ‘creaky’ and stuck. Life brings happiness not pills.

-Do not make every conversation a deep talk. I need distractions from my depressed thoughts. Tell me about bad reality TV, or great teenage books, or someone interesting you met today. Keep it light so that I can distract myself from the dark.

-I’m more than sad. Everyone has periods when they get blue, when they are sad. Sad is normal. Blue is normal. Being down is fine. When I’m in dark depression I feel numb, sad, broken, hopeless, worthless, isolated, worried beyond reason, and so very tired. When I’m normal sad, I can cry and crying is a release. I feel better afterwards. When I’m in deep depression, crying makes me feel worse and I can’t stop crying. Not being able to control my crying jags, makes me feel worse. It’s a horrible cycle.

 -I am not weak. I’m fighting every moment of my day to be as content and happy as a healthy person. Some days the routine tasks feel like a marathon. You may be strolling through days, but I’m battling to stay afloat.

The big question

I’ve learned that there is an unspoken question others feel the need to ask those with depression.

“Do you want to kill yourself?”

My answer is NO! No! I didn’t want to commit suicide at any point of this disease.

The tricky part about depression is that your thought process is so screwed up that though you have no desire to end your life, death is still on your mind. Thoughts and worries about death felt utterly unavoidable. They were both simple and complex. Death thoughts came in many variations.

“If I don’t pay closer attention when I drive, I could crash the car and kill both me and the kids. I must pay closer attention.”

“Follow the directions on my sleeping medicine with extreme vigilance so I don’t end up in a coma.”

“Can lack of sleep kill you?”

The worst moments were when I was faced with a situation that I just didn’t trust myself in. One day I was crying, and thought that maybe a hot bath would calm me down. A second later I sobbed and realized that I just don’t trust myself in a bathtub at that moment. I didn’t think that I would try and harm myself in the bathtub, but at that moment I felt so out of control of my mind that I didn’t know if I would make the worst choice of my life.

It was in that moment I understood how happy/healthy people commit suicide. When the mind is sick as as mine was at that point, I wasn’t able to make right or wrong choices. Depression made me feel completely detached from everything around me, even detached from myself. If I had tried to hurt myself, it wouldn’t have been a choice. It wouldn’t have been logical. It would have been beyond mine or your understanding because it was unfathomable. The sick part of me would have thought that putting my head under water and letting everything go was good.

It wouldn’t have been me, the Michelle you know. It would have been the sickness.

So…yeah…this is a deep discussion. I hate having to ask you to think about this. I hate showing such a dark part of me. But I need you to see that in the deep moments of depression, a person is walking a fine line. The mind is battling to remain sane. The world looks bleak and you feel  SO isolated. I felt numb, confused, exhausted, broken, worthless, afraid... all at once.

Here’s the kicker: Don’t make your first question to a depressed person about suicide. It’s insulting.  We don’t want to start off by showing you the deepest darkest part of our crazy. But…if you know someone who is depressed and the depression is getting worse…if you’re worried…if you love him…ask if he thinking about hurting themselves. Remind her that life is here waiting for her to get healthy again. Remind him that the world is wonderful and joyful and he is part of what makes it that way. Tell her that the negative thoughts in her head are not true. If she ever needs someone to be the voice of hope, love and strength when hers is lost…be that voice for her.

I have a story to tell you

I’ve been absent from my blogs for a while. Partially it was due to some of Dustin’s work stuff (long story), but mostly I’ve been silent because I’ve been struggling with clinical depression.

From the beginning of this process, I wrestled with how to explain this to people. I could keep silent and keep my story to myself and my family. I didn’t want to be the person who used depression as an excuse. I didn’t want to tell my story the wrong way and have others pity me.  

In the next few days I would like to describe how depression affects me. Through my story, I hope that you will see that depression is not just having a lot of sad days. It is scary and humbling, but it is making me a stronger person. I’m glad for the personal change.

Please enjoy

Breakdown

I think I’ve been teetering on the edge of serious depression. Keeping my patience with the kids was getting harder by the day. Little challenges like getting the car registered required as much planning as an Artic expedition. I cooked dinners that were too salty, too bland, raw, burnt, or illogical (Greek salad with fried rice). The worst part was decision making. I felt like my mind was wading through mud as I made decision. Looking back, I think I’d felt like this for months. I could manage life, but it was a lot of work to get through a normal day. I was fighting everyday to find happiness.

In August things got worse. I can’t say what made me worse, but I went from treading water to drowning in life in about two weeks. I yelled at the kids all the time. Poor Vivian couldn’t do anything without me scolding her. One day she told me, “I had a good dream. You didn’t yell at me and we had fun.” I think my heart broke. Then I started crying. When I’m feeling normal, I cry to work out a problem and when I’m done crying I feel better. This sort of crying wouldn’t stop. I would slump against the wall in my closet and cry for nearly an hour (a couple times a day), and I wouldn’t feel better. I would feel ten times worse than I did before.

My kids are the best. One more than once occasion I would hear them whisper outside the door, “Mommy is crying. We need to make her happy,” then they would pop into the doorway and make silly faces at me to cheer me up. This would make me cry even more because I felt like I didn’t deserve children who could be so wonderful. I yelled at them all the time. How could they want to make happy when I was always making them cry?

I was more than sad. I was broken.

Picasso's Woman in the mirror. Exactly how I felt.

I couldn’t sleep. I’d wake up at 3 am and not be able to go back to sleep. I would pour a bowl of cereal, and stare at it. I couldn’t make myself eat it. My appetite was gone, gone, gone.  I made lists for everything. I even had to put the most mundane tasks (brush teeth, do dishes, get gas)  on my list because I couldn’t remember a thing.  Nothing was engaging. I couldn’t focus on TV or books or sewing or any of the hobbies I enjoy. I knew I should have enjoyed fun times with my family, but it was like watching the world from an aquarium. Everything was muted, and I had a buffer between me and the rest of the world. I felt miserable, trapped, isolated and safe all at once.

And I stressed. Oh my, did I stress. I know now that it’s called cyclical thinking (worry). You know when you get a song stuck in your head? Well I had unfounded worries stuck in my head. If it only bothered me for a couple hours a day, I would have been fine. That was not the case. I worried all the time. I couldn’t fall asleep because I was worrying. Then I would wake up at 2am because I was worrying and then not be able to fall back asleep because I was worrying.

It got worse and worse…One Thursday I couldn’t stop crying. The image of a Picasso painting of a fractured woman popped into my head. I finally knew what in the hell Picasso was trying to show the world. Depression is when you are so broken that you can’t even recognize your own mind. I felt fractured. I didn’t even recognize my own thought process. That scared the shit out of me.  

Then I went to my doctor. She diagnosed me with clinical depression.

I was filled with relief.

Not my imagination

I am not a girl who gets sad when diagnosed with a medical problem. Every time my doctor tells me there is something wrong with me, I feel great relief because I now have name for what is making me feel the way I felt. With a diagnosis I can see a path for getting better.

Knowing that I had clinical depression was wonderful. I now knew that my brain was a bit broken. My brain chemistry was out of whack. I had felt like I was weak. Couldn’t cope. Broken. Overreacting. Stressed out...but now…now I knew that it wasn’t me being unable to deal with life. My brain was just not working right.

Here’s what you may not know about starting antidepressants. Things can get worse before they get better. I thought I had hit rock bottom of personal insanity, then I started Prozac. For a week I was worse. I couldn’t focus. I cried more. I simply couldn’t eat. I lost seven pounds in a week. I couldn’t sleep.

I had many, many moments when I thought that the cure was worse than the ill, but I started seeing little improvements. I worried less and had moments of joy. I should have felt hopeless, but I saw that I was getting better.  I finally begged my doctor for some Ambien so I could finally sleep.

Sleep helped. A lot.

I still had days when I couldn’t get off the couch. All I wanted to do was lie on the couch and stare into space. I couldn’t even pay attention to TV. The TV would get turned to E! and before I knew it I was watching hours of “Married to Jonas”, and I didn’t care.

The people who love me

I don’t know how long I would have allowed myself to wallow in deep depression if I didn’t have people who love me.

Dustin...sigh…you know he is amazing, right? I think there were moments when he was scared by my behavior. I woke him up at 4 am on many mornings and just cried on his shoulder. He was what every woman wants. Dustin didn’t try to fix my problems. He didn’t tell me not to worry. He didn’t get angry (often). He held me and was my strength until I was able to be strong again. Dustin woke up and put Vivian on the school bus. He fed Logan breakfast. He paid the bills. When I was unable to be a good mom, he stepped up and was the best dad.

My kids were forgiving. I don’t know if they would have weathered my storm as well if they were older, but I am thankful that they are innocent and have short memories. They did so many things to cheer me up. They picked me flowers, made silly faces, and told knock-knock jokes until I thought I would go even more crazy.  I could find myself switch from tears of misery to tears of joy and unworthiness in the matter of moments thanks to those two.

Leigh is my neighbor. Neighbor is an understatement of what she is to me. Most weekdays I see her more than Dustin. We talk about everything and nothing. I cannot stress enough the importance of having someone who can talk about the deepest maters of the heart at one moment and distract you with summaries of bad celebrity gossip the next. Leigh can tell my mood with a five word text message and be the friend I need at that moment with total selflessness. I learned how to cope with depression thanks to her. I’ve learned a lot about the importance of keeping distracted and busy so the blues don’t hold me down. Yes I’ve invaded her home with a sharp knife and a pot, so I could cook and keep myself busy.

My parents, though far away, were great help. I avoided my mom’s phone calls for a while because I didn’t want to cry on the phone with her. Thankfully she kept calling. Kept checking on me. Though being asked twice a day how I was doing was annoying at times, I needed it. My dad was (has always been) a calming influence. Though he doesn’t know it (you do now), my dad is the person who reminds me of my greater family history. Conversations with my dad bring back conversations from ten years back that help me see that depression is nothing new for me. Now is just a really bad spot.

My sister…well we’re in this head-fuck together. When I was at my worse she was strong for me, and when she is having a bad day I can be strong for her. I never want anyone to have to experience depression, but I am thankful for her understanding and solidarity.

I need another beer.

Getting back to normal

Yesterday it dawned on me, being happy is a lot less work than it use to be. Before my breakdown, before medicine, I was working hard every day to be happy. Maybe that’s why I changed my blog all that time ago… Happiness shouldn’t be work, but it was. I had to tell myself, “Michelle, look at this moment. This is what makes you happy. Be happy because of it.” Now happiness is natural. It is part of me, as happiness should be.

I’m also more forgiving to myself. My motto right now is ‘good enough’. I don’t have to be perfect, or even great. I just have to be good enough to be safe and healthy. I also accept the fact that sometimes I will not be able to sleep. I wake up most mornings at five a.m. now, but I accept that I can live a healthy life even if I am awake way before the sun comes up (I woke up at 3:30am this morning).

I’ve learned what I need to cope with times of stress and worry. I walk with Leigh many mornings. A brisk morning walk with someone who I can rant my worries and anger to, is a great way to settle myself to face the day. (Thankfully Leigh gets as much from the morning bitch-fest and walk as I do). I also now understand that my previous coping strategies work as well now as they did before I had a break down. I know its ok to use hobbies as a diversion from my worries. I had a bad day this week, and rather than allow myself to surrender to depression, I canned three batches for jam in two hours. It’s not normal, but it’s better than the alternative.

I’m learning that I am ok with having depression. I’m coming out of this experience stronger and more certain with the direction my life is taking. I am beginning to see the difference between being where I have to be in life and where I choose to be.

I’m not sure if depression is a phase for me, or if it will be a life-long battle. Either way, I think that I’ll be brave enough to get the help that I need to stay healthy.