I’ve been feeling for awhile now that I’m probably going into a depression. It’s been pretty confusing because for the past 6 months I have been up and down so frequently and sometimes “mixed” so that the up and down can’t totally be distinguished. But after my most recent episode where I had intervention from my doctors to keep me from being hospitalized (I wasn’t feeling depressed at all) my meds have gotten switched up a lot and I do think my current meds are keeping the manic portion of my illness at bay. I haven’t had any weird thoughts or actions in a few weeks. However, my doctors warned me that depressed often follows mania, and so they are on the guard and want me to be aware too. And I can safely say that they are right, and in my case, depression is definitely following this manic or mixed period.
It’s weird, because the term depression gets thrown around so much now that it has no real meaning anymore. Anyone who has a bad day says “I’m depressed.” Those who actually suffer from depression as a mental/medical illness know that it can be unbearable. I hate the way that I feel right now for a lot of reasons. I hate it because I thought it was gone. I haven’t felt this way in many years which in itself, confounds me. In the past few years I’ve gone through a lot of rough times, situations that 95% of people never have to deal with. And through all of that, I was able to somehow stay strong, despite the fact that I had no real support system and I have been living with this illness all my life. I guess it was just in remission at the time. I remember even thinking to myself then, how every day was kind of the same…one went into the next…no real super highs or super lows. And it basically stayed that way for the bulk of two years. It was great, looking back in retrospect. Not the horrible things I went through of course, but having the stability to be ABLE to make it through and be no worse for wear, essentially.
Now, I’m here in this situation and I don’t know what to do. And I keep telling myself, I need to change something. I need to be proactive, I need, SOMEHOW, to thwart this depression, to quell these feelings. Yet I can’t. And I realize now, that is the worst thing at all in life. To have these feelings…for no reason at all…at to be unable to stop them from happening. The sense of helplessness and hopelessness only contributes to the feelings of despair. I want to sleep all day because I cannot bear the thought of muddling through the 12 hours until it’s time to go to sleep again. There is no joy in my life now. And I don’t know why. That’s the worst thing. I don’t know why. There is no reason. It is a feeling…it exists…no matter what I do, what I change, it persists. And I feel so sad…I feel sad just because that is the way of this illness. But I feel even sadder because I cannot do anything about it. It is my lot in life. It’s endless; cyclical; repetitive. It makes me want to give up completely. Because who wants to life a life so completely out control? A life where you are blown to and fro, and the actions you take are dictated by a cruel puppeteer that rules your mind totally? There is no out; no escape. At times the life I live seems worse than death. I admit that over the course of my life I have contemplated suicide countless times. After my one and only actual attempt, 5 years ago, I thought I would never think or feel that way again. Yet here I am, and the thoughts recur. I want to blot them out. I want to stop everything from happening. I don’t want to die…I’m not suicidal. I just want to go back to the time when I was happy…when I had stability. I want to go back to the time when I was satisfied…when I had control over my mind, my life, the things around me. I want to know a life that is different from this…this constant torturous merry-go-round that I ride.
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