For the past couple of weeks, months even, I've hidden from everything and everyone. Blinds closed, curtains drawn, hardly ever leave the apartment, deactivate my Facebook kind of hiding. I'm not really sure when it started but something triggered it. Something that to anyone else would be trivial and petty and easily brushed off and ignored. But here's the thing, when you are battling depression that is so physically, emotionally and spiritually crippling you can't separate the little things from the big things because they are all big things.
I've dealt with depression since I was a teenager. I've been on this medication and that one. In fact, I've pretty much been constantly medicated in some form or another for nearly the past 15 years - pregnancy and breastfeeding aside. I've been seen by psychologists and psychiatrists. I've been to family therapists, trauma therapists, LDS therapists. For those of you who don't know much about my life I suppose you could say that I sound like a crazy person.
Through all of that though, I have never felt as low as I do lately. I've somehow gotten myself into a place that is so dark and twisty that I don't even recognize myself anymore. I feel broken. Like all of my past and all of my present have flooded every inch of me with negative self doubt and insecurity. Why? I don't know. It could be a postpartum thing. It could be a PTSD thing. It could be a two-years-away-from-turning-thirty thing. Who knows?
If I examine all of the things in my life that I regret or that I am afraid of or that I usually try not to remember, the running theme seems to be that I have felt that I have been unheard. And I'm angry about it.
My solution? Hide from the world and isolate myself. Drive my husband crazy with worry with uncharacteristically impulsive decisions that are harmful and damaging. Appear unapproachable and prickly. Flake on friends and family just to lay on the couch all day and eat candy and get fat. Obviously it's not a good long term plan.
My father-in-law said something to my husband that made a lot of sense to me. He said that dealing with depression isn't as simple as we think it should be. Just taking an anti-depressant isn't the answer. That's only twenty percent of the answer. Going to therapy is maybe another twenty percent. Eating healthily and exercising often is say fifteen percent. Making time to do things you enjoy is another ten percent. Getting enough sleep - fifteen percent. Spending time with people who make you feel good about yourself is twenty percent.
I've got a lot of work to do to pull myself out of this. I guess what I'm saying is please be patient with me.
