The depressive episodes

“You don’t want to live, but you don’t want to die. You don’t want to talk to anyone, but you feel lonely. You wake up in the morning and simply wait for the night to come.

I had my first depressive episode during my freshmen year at college. I had been dating an emotionally abusive excuse for a man and I found out he cheated on me. Luckily, I stuck to my guns and broke up with him, but unluckily, it triggered something inside of me. It was the first time I ever felt it to that extent. This wasn’t middle school Grace listening to Avril Lavigne and crying over that one crush- this was something different. I stopped eating. I started sleeping fourteen to sixteen hours a night. I barely left my bed. I felt numb everywhere. Nothing mattered, and everything disappeared. My friends expressed concern and my dad drove my dog up to Purdue to ‘cheer me up’, but they couldn’t pull me out of it. Eventually, I did, and even though it would be years before another depressive episode, I had no idea what was yet to come.

I am traumatized by depression. It’s not even about being hospitalized for suicidal thoughts or undergoing ten electroshock therapy surgeries to restart my brain. It’s the losing yourself for me. Depression takes everything. It steals who you are, and you turn into an imprint of expectations a different version of you had. You don’t have a personality anymore. It starts slowly, but after several years of severe depression, you lose yourself in a way that was never your fault. Up to eight percent of the population experience depression, and it’s more in common in women than men. It’s a relatively low number of people considering a need for likeness, but I think the number is probably quite higher. With bipolar disorder, the depression can be worse, and it’s usually in episodes but I still experience a general depression that’s always there. It has gotten so much better, and I think it’s a good time to reflect on my experience.

I didn’t even know I was experiencing depression at a certain point. I had gotten so used to it that it basically became me. Only my family was able to differentiate between the two states. I still find it difficult to explain depression, and I’m only now able to step back and realize how severe it was. I didn’t work for five years. My only mode was survival. In PHP programs, my therapist had to write brushing my teeth on my to do list. At first, I tried to hide it. My automatic belief was that it was my fault, and this carried on until quite recently. It made it hard to be honest, and I am still working through discussing my day-to-day emotions without blaming myself for them. I remember telling my mom it was time to go to the hospital. I was genuinely scared for my life, and that hospital trip didn’t cure me, but it is the reason I am here today. 

I want to stress something. I lived with depression for over a decade before it got better. Some days were better than others, but I experienced it every day for years. Nothing I can say will fix you immediately, but I do promise that the hard work you put in stacks up, and one day, you will be better. The first sign that the depression was fading for me was the emotions. I had lived for so many years in a complete state of numbness that I didn’t remember what emotions felt like at first. It was jarring and uncomfortable. I confused excitement with anxiety, and desperately tried to “fix” the sudden influx. After that, and very slowly, I started to get my energy back. I could watch a show or movie without falling asleep right away. I stopped going to bed at six pm, and I could fill my day without disappointing myself. Mixed with the emotions, I started to learn who I was again. I am hard working and passionate. I am spiritually connected. I love notebooks and want to be a type A person. Nothing but this could lead me to accept the depression. I had come up for breath and realized how hard it had been to find air. Now, on most days, I don’t feel it, but the imprint it left does terrify me. 

I had already been diagnosed with PTSD by the time depression traumatized me. Think of it like blocks stacking on top of one another- one trauma connects to another and then another. Having PTSD makes you vulnerable to experience more trauma, and the years I spent struggling with my mental health traumatized me a lot. I still wake up in the mornings with a panic attack based in terror of the day. What if it happens again? Can I get through this day? How horrible is it going to be? It lights up my nervous system and I have to work really hard to calm it down. It takes effort, and it’s the next step I have to take in my mental health journey. Depression sucks. But you are so much more.

xoxo