Where I’ve Been

A year ago I started on a journey that I thought, at first, would last just the summer. What I originally thought was my OCD getting out of hand became OCD, severe anxiety, and depression combined with a dash of agoraphobia. I learned these issues couldn't be fixed during my summer vacation. The OCD is being controlled by medication and so is my anxiety and horrible panic attacks but it is the depression that is running wild within me.

It feels as if I am trapped on a rollercoaster and through the school year the track became longer and longer. Although there were a handful of highs, most of the year I was on the downward slope. It's hard to explain what depression feels like to someone who has never truly had depression. It's not feeling blue one day because you didn't get what you wanted. It's forcing yourself out of bed because you have to go to work but being terribly tired because you couldn't sleep very well the night before. It's not caring about things that need to be cared for and doing a job to an extreme minimum. It's hoping that another drop isn't coming and then realizing too late that the drop has already happened. It's yearning to feel better through the unexplainable tears that start without reason. It's not even hoping to be happy; it about hoping to be just okay. It's about hoping to see another day yet wondering how bad that day will be.

My depression has blindsided me. I never knew, until I experienced it, what it does to a person. I don't find joy in much. The biggest side effect of the depression has been the terrible fact that it's curtailing my creative writing. Last summer I wrote my first book and planned to write another this summer but the depression is smothering my words. The story I'm working on now is not one to see the light of day; it's mainly just a piece to keep my fingers going but the quality is horrible. Some days I can only get a few sentences typed. I had such creative flow last summer but it's been robbed by the depression. This I am sad about and angry. My apartment could be a mess, I could wear the same t-shirt for three days in a row, but it's the loss of my ability to creatively write that I'm most upset about.

Writing was my way to remove myself from my sorrows and the pain they brought on. On this journey I've been on, as with any journey a person takes, I've learned things about myself and remembered painful moments. As the clarity came, so did the depression. Part of me wishes I never started this journey because remembering is not always a good thing. Memories are dangerous to the psyche and there was no warning before taking that first step.

But that step was taken, the deduction made, and here I am. Depressed, sad, angry, and worried. I have had one worry for most of this last year and that is how far do I keep falling? When will the hits stop coming? When will I level out so that I could have a fighting chance of beating down the depression? I'm a cancer survivor but it was a hundred times easier to treat the cancer than it is to treat depression.

I've been honest in this blog entry; there's no sugar coating depression. Depression cannot be easily fixed by taking a walk or going out for a night on the town. Those are band aids and the brain knows this. Instead of covering up the wound, you have to treat it and sometimes that treatment takes a long time.