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
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Thanks for writing this informative and personal post. I too suffer from depression and anxiety. I have been on medication for the past few years and it makes a world of difference. These past months have been extremely difficult with the death of my spouse, which had me bordering on suicidal. It's funny, I talked about it with friends, but I'm not sure they believed me. Others who haven't had to deal with depression, or grief, or both, often feel that it is something we should be able to just have a better attitude about.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoy your writing. It's what keeps me moving forward.
Dan
Your story about the socks sounds like something I would have done back in my younger days. I was (and still am) very shy and it is sometimes difficult for me to ask for help.
ReplyDeleteRegarding agoraphobia -- when I was a teenager, it was so debilitating that I couldn't go outside of the yard around my parents' house during daylight. Night was different. I would take my dog and walk for two or three hours through the dark in our neighbourhood and beyond and I would be fine. Luckily, my parents were understanding and let me do a lot of wandering. I didn't get over my agoraphobia until about a year or so after I met and married my husband, Don. I've been okay for the past 35 years. However, since he died 17 months ago, I have felt twinges of my old fears - not bad enough to concern me, but I recognize the uneasiness. One of the reasons I went on the road after my husband died was becasue I was worried the agoraphobia might return and I wanted to cut it off at the pass. Anyhow, all of that to say that I know just how difficult it is to deal with depression and anxiety. Like Dan, I have thought about suicide occasionally since my husband died - especially in the first few months after he died. I think it was just kind of "too much" for someone to go through.