As anyone who has read my blog knows, I suffer from depression. I take my medications religiously rarely if ever missing a dose, yet there are days like today when I wake up and I know that nothing in the day will be right. It's not a matter of things not going my way, but I know enough about my mind by now to know when it has shut down and a personal visit from Bruce Springsteen himself could not cheer me up.
Today I am thinking about Len, my partner of twenty years who died two years ago March 17, a date that happens to be my birthday and I am just filled with sadness. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for my current partner Mike and the life I lead but sometimes I just miss Len. You had to know him to know what I am talking about. While so far from perfect he had a laugh that could fill a room and despite the age difference and despite his physical problems I just thought he would live forever.
Today I am thinking about my own maladies-I had pneumonia in December and my body is playing tricks on me. I quit smoking and gained ten pounds and my jeans dont fit and I dont have the money this week to go out and get new jeans (in a larger size), I go to the gym and my body that I was once so proud of does not look the same and it is taking a long time for the muscle fibers to come back and in the meantime I feel like a lopsided mess.
Staying home on sick leave messed with my mind and I am fighting depression, I am fighting agoraphobia, I am fighting social anxiety disorder. Tomorrow I have to go back to work and I am worried about having a panic attack at work. On a brighter note I do have an appointment with a behaviorial psychologist tomorrow who claims he can cure me of my panic attacks.
I am tired. I am tired of the fight. That does not mean I wont continue to fight but the one two punch of pneumonia and depression really knocked me on my ass and I am struggling to get up. Depression is not always about feeling sad, sometimes it is about feeling overwhelmed. The sadness I can deal with, what I can't deal with is being behind in my bills because the thought of sitting down and facing them is more than I can handle.
I don't want my depression to define who I am. I went to the gym four days in a row this week, I went to the movies and I almost went to the circus today. It's not easy life right now but I wont give up.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Depression
Depression
Everyone gets the blues now and then. That unshakeable feeling that things just kind of suck and you wish you were anyone than who you are. But for most people those feelings of worthlessness or listlessness subside after a day or so and they return back to their lives, unaware of what was making them feel so down just a few days ago, but, if the numbers from the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) are to be believed, an estimated 57 million Americans suffer from depression. I, along several of my friends and family, am among that staggering 57 million.
When you mention depression to most people, the everyday blues come to mind. People don’t understand how depression can manifest itself and cripple an individual. Looking back, I can trace my first bouts with depression to my early 20’s; I was in the Navy on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and I was down to one pair of socks. The problem was that I did not know where the ship’s store was, and asking someone for directions just became an overwhelming task-something that seemed like way more than I could handle, so for about two months, until we pulled back into port, I wore the same pair of socks every day-washing them and hanging them out to dry each night before I went to bed. The key word in that story is overwhelming. When my depression is acting up (as it has been the last month or so) everyday tasks seem overwhelming, something as simple as cleaning my room can seem like something I can’t conquer, so the dirty laundry piles up and the rugs go un-vacuumed.
Somewhere along the line, my depression branched out and instead of just feeling down or overwhelmed I developed and anxiety disorder. I have been diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder with possible elements of post traumatic stress syndrome. What this means in everyday terms, is that without the proper medication (and I have tried many) I can’t function. When I am around people, be they friend or strangers, I get extremely nervous, my heart beats fast and I have panic attacks. If I am able to talk to the person at all, the internal dialogue going on in my head is usually “Please stop talking to me so that I can get out of this conversation and into my safety zone” It’s a terrible way to live because I never know when or where it is going to strike me and sometimes I can be in a situation and everything is fine and then later I am in the same situation and full blown panic attack.
My latest emotional “tick” is agoraphobia. For those of you unaware of that term it is the fear of leaving your house or what you deem to be your safety zone. Agoraphobia is something I only recently experienced and luckily I found a medication that took away the symptoms pretty quickly, but a recent illness has left me recuperating at home for a number of weeks and my depression is worse than ever. For me, this means my panic attacks and agoraphobia are back. Luckily for me I have an understanding spouse and more importantly a good doctor and today I was on the phone with him for 45 minutes (for which I will undoubtedly be charged) and we discussed fun things like the sub conscious and the role it plays in our lives and more importantly we discussed and changed my medicine regimen.
I picked up my new meds today and in a few days the new meds will kick in and I will be functioning again, but I have friends and family members that are not that lucky. I know extremely intelligent, well educated people who are unable to work because of their depression. I imagine the worst part of not being able to work is the comments and judgments made against them. “Why they should just pull themselves up by their boot straps and get to work” when the truth of the matter is they cant work.
Two years ago I lost a dear friend to suicide. Life just got to be too much for him. A lot of people thought my friend was just selfish. I never thought that. I knew my friend very well and selfish was something he never was, but he was depressed and life just became overwhelming for him.
Today I sit here on this cold snowy February Saturday writing about depression. I do it for myself because before I got sick, one of the things I enjoyed doing was writing and blogging. I got a lot of positive feedback on my blogs (though no newspaper wanted to publish them) but after I got sick the depression got so bad that I just couldn’t write.
for those of you who do-well you know exactly what I am talking aboutI feel more alive today because I talked to my doctor and we came up with a plan and I feel as though there is hope, I am not doomed to spend eternity like this. So for any of you reading this who never experienced chronic depression, consider yourself lucky and for those of you who do-well you know exactly what I am talking about
Everyone gets the blues now and then. That unshakeable feeling that things just kind of suck and you wish you were anyone than who you are. But for most people those feelings of worthlessness or listlessness subside after a day or so and they return back to their lives, unaware of what was making them feel so down just a few days ago, but, if the numbers from the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) are to be believed, an estimated 57 million Americans suffer from depression. I, along several of my friends and family, am among that staggering 57 million.
When you mention depression to most people, the everyday blues come to mind. People don’t understand how depression can manifest itself and cripple an individual. Looking back, I can trace my first bouts with depression to my early 20’s; I was in the Navy on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and I was down to one pair of socks. The problem was that I did not know where the ship’s store was, and asking someone for directions just became an overwhelming task-something that seemed like way more than I could handle, so for about two months, until we pulled back into port, I wore the same pair of socks every day-washing them and hanging them out to dry each night before I went to bed. The key word in that story is overwhelming. When my depression is acting up (as it has been the last month or so) everyday tasks seem overwhelming, something as simple as cleaning my room can seem like something I can’t conquer, so the dirty laundry piles up and the rugs go un-vacuumed.
Somewhere along the line, my depression branched out and instead of just feeling down or overwhelmed I developed and anxiety disorder. I have been diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder with possible elements of post traumatic stress syndrome. What this means in everyday terms, is that without the proper medication (and I have tried many) I can’t function. When I am around people, be they friend or strangers, I get extremely nervous, my heart beats fast and I have panic attacks. If I am able to talk to the person at all, the internal dialogue going on in my head is usually “Please stop talking to me so that I can get out of this conversation and into my safety zone” It’s a terrible way to live because I never know when or where it is going to strike me and sometimes I can be in a situation and everything is fine and then later I am in the same situation and full blown panic attack.
My latest emotional “tick” is agoraphobia. For those of you unaware of that term it is the fear of leaving your house or what you deem to be your safety zone. Agoraphobia is something I only recently experienced and luckily I found a medication that took away the symptoms pretty quickly, but a recent illness has left me recuperating at home for a number of weeks and my depression is worse than ever. For me, this means my panic attacks and agoraphobia are back. Luckily for me I have an understanding spouse and more importantly a good doctor and today I was on the phone with him for 45 minutes (for which I will undoubtedly be charged) and we discussed fun things like the sub conscious and the role it plays in our lives and more importantly we discussed and changed my medicine regimen.
I picked up my new meds today and in a few days the new meds will kick in and I will be functioning again, but I have friends and family members that are not that lucky. I know extremely intelligent, well educated people who are unable to work because of their depression. I imagine the worst part of not being able to work is the comments and judgments made against them. “Why they should just pull themselves up by their boot straps and get to work” when the truth of the matter is they cant work.
Two years ago I lost a dear friend to suicide. Life just got to be too much for him. A lot of people thought my friend was just selfish. I never thought that. I knew my friend very well and selfish was something he never was, but he was depressed and life just became overwhelming for him.
Today I sit here on this cold snowy February Saturday writing about depression. I do it for myself because before I got sick, one of the things I enjoyed doing was writing and blogging. I got a lot of positive feedback on my blogs (though no newspaper wanted to publish them) but after I got sick the depression got so bad that I just couldn’t write.
for those of you who do-well you know exactly what I am talking aboutI feel more alive today because I talked to my doctor and we came up with a plan and I feel as though there is hope, I am not doomed to spend eternity like this. So for any of you reading this who never experienced chronic depression, consider yourself lucky and for those of you who do-well you know exactly what I am talking about
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