I take medication for depression. I’m fine. Don’t worry. But for awhile, some time after my son was born, I wasn’t okay. I dealt with being not okay pretty well, and kept up the facade of okay until one day when the facade cracked and I threw a bowl of blueberries across the kitchen and threw a folk into my kitchen cabinet and scared my kids.
What they didn’t know was that I had been scared for a while before that. Scared of the thoughts that popped into my head. Scared of how I would double over, wheezing and unable to catch my breath, panicking for no reason while totally safe in my own home. Scared of why I never wanted to get out of bed.
Some time after that – too long after that, in retrospect – I called a doctor’s clinic and, fighting back sobs, I asked for an appointment at the walk-in clinic that day. The receptionist asked why I needed to be seen and I choked out, embarrassed, “I think I have post-partum depression.”
“Oh,” she said, “We don’t normally see people for that at the walk-in clinic. Do you have a regular doctor I can book you with at their next available appointment?”
“I…I really think I need to see someone today.” There was some crying involved when I made that statement, and there’s a teeny bit now as I type this out, and remember it.
“I can get you in at 4:30.”
God bless that receptionist, and the nurse practitioner I saw that day. The nurse had five sons and understood that not sleeping for two years is a kind of special torture. She handed me kleenex and a stop-gap prescription for Sertraline and got me booked in with my now regular doctor for follow-ups.
Some time after that, I stopped having scary thoughts pop into my head unbidden. I was able to stop drinking too much wine as a kind of sick self-medication every night. I re-found the joy in raising my wonderful children.
It’s weird to talk about depression. It’s not like I had anything to be bummed about. I had (and have) a great husband, healthy kids, a great life. I go for walks, I practice active gratitude, I eat healthy fats. All that crap should have made me sunny-side up, all the time. But depression isn’t being sad. Telling someone with depression to just cheer up is like telling someone without a leg to just walk it off.
Why am I talking about this? Even as I write this, I don’t know if I’ll publish it. It’s a private thing, it feels private, and let’s face it – I’m a garden blogger. Who cares what I have to say about mental health? Plus, I imagine the barrage of not-helpful suggestions and comments and emails I’m opening myself up to – “you should try meditation not pills!” – because trust me, people have their opinions.
And yet…Robin Williams died Monday at his own hand. You don’t even have to be a fan of Mr. Williams to feel his loss; he was just part of the fabric of our collective consciousness. This man who made us laugh, this man who was outsized in his personality and in his life, this voice of fucking Disney characters was, according to news reports, battling severe depression. I know nothing about his personal life, of course, but his death says to me that he was awfully tired of that battle.
People all over are reading about Robin Williams and his suicide right now, and they are asking why? But I know why. People who know depression, they know why. The details and the individual differences aren’t that important; that big dysfunctional brain chemistry is common core. Nothing – not fame, or money, or prestige – can outrun brain chemistry.
Statistically, about a thousand people with depression will read my blog today. That’s a thousand people who have that scary, deep-bone understanding of why, and they probably don’t want to talk about this either. But still they know. Maybe they’ve had scary thoughts, too. Or maybe they just have enough experience with depression and enough imagination to extrapolate.
If you are in that thousand, and you are battling depression, please, please get help. The people who work with depression – doctors, therapists, naturopaths – whatever you’re comfortable with – they have seen it all before and they won’t laugh or judge or anything. And things can get back to normal, they really can. Depression is terrible. It is a terrible, scary, insidious mind-fuck. It’s not because you aren’t trying hard enough or aren’t “looking on the bright side” aggressively enough. Many things can trigger it, and it’s not your fault, and it doesn’t need to be forever.
And also, everyone go read this. It’s the most brilliant, hilarious, true description of depression I’ve ever read.
Rest in Peace, Robin Williams.
1
This blog and all of the comments are the most important information I have ever read on the internet. Thank all of you!
Lovely, honest post and very relate-able especially the throwing things. Gratitude abounds for the people who opened the way for you in seeking help and for compassion and empathy. I do not make light of any of it, I have been here most of my life. You have my sincerest compassion. Best to you.
Thank you, Erica, for your courage in posting this. I was just diagnosed with “major clinical depression”. All this time I thought I lacked willpower and discipline and was beating myself up for being such a failure. On the one hand it’s a relief to know that I’m not a total fuck up – there’s a biologic/chemical reason why it’s so hard to get out of bed every morning. On the other hand, I am devastated that I have this diagnosis – so much stigma attached to it. Thank you for being the wonderful person that you are – you have affected my life in a very positive way.
Erica, your comment has been sticking with me since yesterday when I read it: “I am devastated that I have this diagnosis – so much stigma attached to it.” I finally realized this morning what I wanted to tell you. For me at least, the whole stigma mattered at lot when I was depressed, but now that I’ve been on the right antidepressants for quite a while, the stigma thing doesn’t bother me much at all. I think it’s one of the results of “getting better.” One of the effects of the antidepressants is that they have made me much more confident in my own skin. It’s not that I tell everyone I meet or anything, but if they find out, I’m not going to stress about it too much. I’m pretty comfortable explaining “it’s a brain chemistry thing,” (i.e., it’s not my fault). I hope this makes you feel better. Good luck with your journey.
Thank you Claudette!
Thank You for your bravery Sistah! Just keep swimming, just keep swimming~
Hugs,
Lesli Townsend
Townsend Country Soaps
Thank you.
<3
Thank you, Erica, for a courageous and inspiring post, and thanks to all the commenters who have responded with gratitude and kindness. It helps to know we are not alone.
Thank you for writing this. My best friend struggles with depression and is hesitant to get the help she needs because of “the stigma associated with depression”, If more people are open about their struggles, hopefully, more people will be less afraid to seek the help they need. I am very glad things are better for you now.
I’m one of the thousand, too. Thanks for posting. And thanks for linking to Allie Brosh. God, I love her!
Bless you. Thanks so much for posting this. It’s good to have these conversations in the most unlikely of places (you’re more likely to reach the people who need to consider).
I appreciate your honesty.
I don’t know if you’ve ever read Lev Grossman’s The Magician’s series. On Goodreads, it’ll either get five stars or one star. I’m pretty sure that the dividing line is whether you have experienced depression and can recognize both the humor and despair of going through the darker side of life…or not.
The thing that surprised me about losing Robin Williams is that I have always thought he understood what meant to have that dark side and keep living and growing and producing. I have felt that I have gotten much, much better at managing things as I grow older..good food, exercise, importance of friends…it is scary to know that it could still go back the other way.
Like all the other commenters, I too thank you for sharing your thoughts on depression. I use low blood sugar as a way to explain depression to folks who don’t understand that’s its a brain chemistry thing. When genuinely hungry or low on blood sugar, most people get a little cranky. Small things become big things and any conversation is terse. The hungry person is feeling “off”. Its the body’s way of alerting you that it really needs fuel, you’re blood chemistry is out of synch. Its low on glucose. One turkey sandwich later..the hungry person feels normal again. Chemistry problem solved. Depression is the same thing happening inside your brain. Of course its a lot more complicated and won’t be solved by a turkey sandwich (at least not for most) but its a matter of getting the chemical balance corrected inside the brain. Finding that chemical balance again can be difficult and differs for each individual – the fact that much of the public doesn’t understand what depression really is, makes it even harder on the sufferers. Having more frank and open discussions about depression will hopefully make it a less shameful topic.
I did not read through all the comments, so this post may be a repeat of what others have said. However, I would agree that the advice to get help falls short. I also battled with postpartum depression after the birth of my first child. I didn’t know that I was depressed. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t reflect on anything. There was no ability to analyze. There was only the sadness, anxiety, the fear, and the absolute present moment in which I was trapped. No past. No future. Only right now. I couldn’t have helped myself even if I had wanted to, because I didn’t know that anything was happening to me. Now, when I learn that a friend is expecting a child, I congratulate them and I chat with them about the joy and the excitement of expecting the baby, but I also asked them if they have talked to their spouse or their parents or their siblings about postpartum depression and what they might do should they observe changes. It is a conversation they should have with those who will be around after the birth of the child, because it will be the people around them that will be most able to recognize a problem and guide them toward getting help. I did not have that conversation with my husband. Thank God that he had courage to reach out to me and talk to me about what he was seeing happening to me. We did have a conversation about it as I prepared for the birth of my second child, though thankfully I did not experience PPD again.
I’ve been there, too, but I’m not brave enough to write about it on my blog. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for being brave.
I too, like many others, thank you for this courageous post. I am an acupuncturist, herbalist, and homeopath and as such I would like to take a moment to address your “you should try meditation not pills!” I suspect you are correct you will get a lot of that advice, and I can say that there are good things to be said for the tools of alternative medicine, good diet full of healthy fats and nutrient-dense foods, as well as spiritual practices (where I include yoga, mediation, prayer, etc.). But I also want to say that those don’t always work for everyone; nothing always works for everyone! Sometimes antidepressant drugs are really the only answer; certainly in the short term immediate emergency. I would also like to alert folks that sometimes it’s something odd you would not expect like parasites, Lyme disease, or a genetic variation that makes toxin excretion difficult, and more. I say please do what you need to do to save your life in the immediate emergency, but also please follow up with a Functional Medicine doc (MD) to check for some of those ever-increasing, used to be odd-ball, causes. I would also recommend adding in some alternative medicine therapies that may be enough to help alone, or may just be beneficial as an ancillary, adjunct support along with whatever allopathic (MD) therapy that is indicated to keep you among us. To those of us who battle depression I say: Fight on! Never give up! You are worth it, our world would be much the poorer for the lack of you.
Great points on the many things that can cause depression. I had changed birth control pills because the ones I was on were causing dark spots on my face. I believe it was the new prescription that caused my depression. Our company closed and I had another job lined up with a wonderful company but I quit it after 3 days. I didn’t know why but I just couldn’t be there. I just felt desperate all day long and constantly though about how I could leave without upsetting my great new boss who had given me the job. I spent the next several weeks on the couch crying for no apparent reason. I felt helpless and hopeless. Fortunately I had already stopped the new prescription as I suspected it might be causing my depression. It took about 6 months being off of them before I felt normal again. Years later when I was telling a friend about my experience she said she had the same reaction – but to the prescription I had originally been on. She was fine on the one that gave me problems.
I forwarded this to a friend as soon as I read it this morning. I’ve been his ear for many years and encouraging him to seek help. He made the calls today and has set up appointments to talk to people. He needs medical attention as well, he talked to someone that is helping him to hopefully get approval for all of his needs.
Thank you, Erica! We’ve been worried about our friend for so many years and to know he is finally reaching out… there were many tears shed.
Thank you so much for all you do on this blog!
Love and blessings,
Sharon
This made me cry. I have so much hope for your friend. Thank you.
I appreciate your sharing this. I know it wasn’t easy, but in some way, opening up about it contributes to your wellness. I’ve been there, and come out the other side. It took years before I could talk about it, but I can now because I’m so totally different than the suicidal person I was in the 80’s who had no idea how to get help. After a botched suicide attempt, I saw the look in my children’s faces and promised myself I’d never put them through that again. It took work, but now I’m happy, healthy and mostly at peace (there will always be some degree if guilt).
Erica, I was interested in your query about whether you should post this because you’re a ‘garden blogger’, and the assumption that this is what your readers come. And yes, you should (if you feel you can). And if they feel they can, so should the craft bloggers and the real estate bloggers and the mom bloggers and everyone who has a story to share. Because what we know is that seeking help is so hard, we might need to stumble across a story of depression and successful treatment – we might not look up a mental health blog, or a depression web site. But we might, when we’re looking at the blog site of an awesome mom and gardener, see that this is a universal story of a common, albeit horrible, experience. And that is the key – it can happen to anyone, and that help is at hand (even though this also may take time, patience and tremendous courage).
For people with depression or who are bipolar, the suicide of Robin Williams has been brutal. You know…you know and feel that god awful feeling you know HE was feeling. If that makes any sense. I have been in tears every time I see his picture the past two days. Erica, it is so brave of you to write this. It isn’t easy to do…Talk about depression. You are not alone.
Thank you for sharing. I appreciate and honor your strength!
You’re a good lady, Erica. I know exactly why you did this column. You thought – “I might be able to save a life. Going to go do my best. Not going to hold it back for commercial reasons. Going to try.” by the way, I just LOVE this column!
If you never write another word or blog post again, this – This – will have been enough, Erica. Deepest thanks from those of us who hear that lower voice that undermines the essential beauty in life. If I never say another prayer in my life, let this be enough – Thank you.
Erica, thank you……I will only say that the “corn under the fridge that made start to give a fuck” where my chickens, well my chicken Beatrice actually. I have that cartoon and read when needed 🙂 You rock sista, and No one is more qualified to blog about depression than one who’s been in it’s fog……..
Thanks for your post. It’s so important for people to talk about depression – I’ve experienced enough glimpses of it here and there throughout my life to have a feel for what people with serious, prolongued depression must be battling. Kudos to you for discussing your experiences, and I also hope Robin Williams is resting in peace. He did not deserve such a sad ending.
Vipassana
http://www.dhamma.org/
Perhaps, only when we can talk to each other about this kind of crap, as easily as we talk about planting peas, will there be real community support available to those in all kinds of distress. We are not designed to live as little islands, we are designed to be part of bigger, cooperative groups, where there are many aunties and uncles to assist with the challenges.
Sleep deprivation is a special kind of hell to add onto disrupted brain chemistry due to hormonal and life change. Sleep heals so much. Good luck in your journey and in building the community for yourself that we all need.
I have dysthymia, which means that I am always depressed. Sometimes it’s better, sometimes it’s worse, but it is always there with me. There is no getting better for me, I have had to learn how to cope with it. I have rarely had suicidal thoughts and have never acted on them, but when a depressive suicides, I can understand that it’s because everything feels so bad and the sufferer just can’t see a way out of it, ever. Suicide is giving up the fight, I guess.
I plan to never give up, and I am getting help. Thanks for sharing, the more we talk about this, the more it will be understood.
Thank you for sharing Erica. We are all in this together.
Mental illness is insidious. Four of my 8 siblings have it to some degree – one ending her own life after years of depression. Another sister developed schizophrenia at 18- she is now 60. For years I never mentioned my siblings, knowing that most people have a limited understanding of mental illness. But now I do, and I try to tell people that mental illness is a physical disease that manifests itself behaviorally. People can’t ‘snap out of it’ when they are depressed, and unfortunately we now have an example of someone who seemingly had it all, but was still not able to get the help necessary to prevent his ending his life. I lost a friend quite suddenly – she took her own life. She had twin boys , 12 yrs old, who she adored. I tried for years to find a reason as to why she did this. I finally just accepted it, accepted that I will never have an answer. I wish I had something profound and helpful to say. I am just left again feeling shocked and sad about a loss that I cannot make sense of.
I have something I want to post–
But I want everyone to know that I FULLY realize that my story is not necessarily your story. And that the causes of depression are multicausal. Meaning this isn’t going to be true for everyone. And I understand that. But I want to post it–because if it turns out to be true for someone else, like it was for me, then other people should know about it.
This is my story (in a nutshell):
I know what depression feels like. I’ve experienced it.
Sometimes you feel sad because something sad is happening to you, and sometimes you feel sad because something is working on you spiritually, sometimes you feel sad because you just need some dang sunlight, sometimes you’re sad just because you’re having a crappy day. But sad is different. Sad usually has a reason.
Depression has no reason. It just is. It’s physiologic. No matter what you do to try to “rally” from it–you just keep coming back to this baseline. Because that’s what it is–your physiologic baseline. It sucks beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.
I’m really lucky though. I experienced depression enough to know exactly what it is, but in short enough periods of time, that I only had to endure it for awhile.
The first time I experienced depression was for a 3 month period when I was put on birth control pills by an endocrinologist for PCOS. (polycystic ovarian syndrome–something I’ve had since I was 16)
It came on so insidiously, that I didn’t even realize what was happening. But by the end of my three months on the pill, I was in such an awful funk of depression that I was ready to stop studying for my tests and flunk out of school. (I was in my third year of veterinary school. I had busted my butt for more than 8 years solid, and literally…after all that, with 3 months of depression, I could almost care less if I didn’t graduate). The best way I could describe it was ’emotional castration’. I felt asexual, without drive, without color. The world was grey.
I sat in lecture one day, just wondering to myself. What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? A small voice in my head popped the question–“maybe it’s the pill?”
I stopped taking the pill that night.
The next day I was normal. Literally. Not just ‘better’. I was normal. Only 3 months…and I had almost forgotten what being normal felt like. But just like that…like magic it felt like…I was totally normal. (Note: “normal” isn’t like crazy happy smiley exhuberant…it’s just “normal”. No awful grey, just normal healthy person with normal ups and downs. Normal is a person who can actually ‘choose’ to be happy. Someone who is depressed can’t necessarily do that, at least not in any long term way).
I can’t tell you the amazing relief I felt. There was actually a REASON for what had been happening in my body. It was one of the most wonderful and thankful discoveries I have ever had.
The second experience with depression lasted longer than the first. And it didn’t have to do with medication.
Right around the time I graduated from veterinary school I began to feel myself moving into a depression again. It wasn’t as profound and awful as the birth control experience, but it was sure and steady, and always there. I began to think maybe I had damaged my brain with too much studying. Maybe I was just totally burnt out after so much school. Maybe I was depressed because I was still single. Maybe I was depressed because I was scared about working full time as a professional after entire lifetime of studenthood. Maybe I was depressed because I hated my job. Maybe I was depressed because I was fully an adult now, and adulthood sucks.
My mind was constantly turning over different hypothesis, and none of them really added up. I was functional, but sometimes just barely. I began to wonder how anyone ever really did anything with passion and zest, when my overwhelming feeling was one of despair and darkness.
This went on for a solid year and a half.
Long enough that I know what it feels like to survive and cope.
I never went on medication, because I never told anyone, and I also didn’t want anyone to put me on medication. Because I didn’t want to treat this like it was long term or permanent, even though all signs were pointing to it.
Even though it seems unrelated, I should mention that around the same time this year-and-half-long bout of depression set in, I also began to get weird “adult onset” hayfever. I kept getting itchy itchy eyes, post-nasal drip, sinus headaches etc. etc. I was on Zyrtec constantly, I had CT scans done to see I had sinus infections, I took aspirin and motrin for my headaches.
This relates to the rest of the story, trust me.
Toward the end of this year and half something happened. I was at that point engaged to be married, and looking at starting a family. I mentioned the PCOS thing…well this can be a real fertility problem. So I was worried about it. My sister had just been diagnosed with celiac disease. She had read somewhere that celiac disease can be familial, and that it can also be sometimes associated with infertility. I decided to get tested.
Turns out I was positive for gluten sensitivity. Really positive.
In my fanatical enthusiasm for experiments, I went totally cold turkey off of wheat and gluten. I had been a serious baker of whole-wheat-everything for my entire life up until that point–so this was not easy decision. But I did it, and I did it with gusto. I researched everything containing gluten–from soy sauce to breakfast cereal, and cut it out of my diet completely.
And here was the miracle:
Within three days, THREE DAYS…everything went away. Everything. The depression, the hay-fever, the headaches, the itch eyes…everything. It was like that entire year and a half of emotional abyss hadn’t even happened.
It felt like the most indescribably miracle.
And like an extra bonus, a bunch of other crazy things went away too, thing that I had had since I was a teenager. Like my PCOS, my awful athlete’s foot, seasonal eczema, and weird fluid retention and edema. Those things went away over a period of 3-6 months. It seems that the first things to show up first in my life as clinical signs took the longest to go away, and the clinical signs that showed up the last were the first to go away.
But can I tell you how amazing it was to find out that there was a cause for my depression? Of all of the things that were resolved with my discovery of gluten allergy, the thing that meant the most, by far away, was my cure from depression. Nothing is harder than depression. At least nothing that I have yet to experience in life.
I feel so so deeply for Robin Williams.
I feel even more deeply for him–because of what he DID while he felt that way. In fact, knowing what depression is–I am in awe of him. How he managed to live his life, build his career, inspire, uplift, try….and the entire time, he was dealing with the awful cloak of depression.
His story makes me realize he was probably a better man than anyone actually knew. I don’t think I could have accomplished anything close to that during my year and a half in hell.
I feel very very lucky. And I know that I got some divine help in figuring out my problem.
My point is this– for some people, there may be a straight forward reason for what’s happening to you. There was for me. And maybe I’m just really lucky, but I have a feeling that I’m not so unique that there aren’t at least some people like me.
Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one. And in this case it was simple.
Something I was eating was jacking up my body’s chemistry, and I had to stop eating it.
I hope this helps someone. Maybe someone out there has similar issues, and just doesn’t know it. It is more than worth a try if you haven’t done so already.
Thank you for speaking out about this. I, too, suffer from post-partum depression. It took me longer than it should have to seek help, and it was because I felt like I would be laughed at and told to “buck up”. Making that first call to my doctor to get help was the best thing I ever did – but I didn’t do it alone. If my husband hadn’t helped, I probably still wouldn’t have made that call. People with mental illness can’t necessarily ask for help themselves, but if they have a trusted person they can talk to and can help them get the help the want and need, things can turn out much better.
It really does get better, but you have to ask for help!
Thank you for sharing.
Thank you so for being so very brave and sharing your inner-most secrets. I’ve learned that what I thought was too dark to share, once shared, had a heck of a lot more light and resonance for others than I’d realized as evidenced by the ensuing conversation that so often brought me even closer to friends rather than keeping them at a distance because I was hiding my thoughts. By sharing my sadness, I became vulnerable, and that allowed people to relate to me! And here I was thinking I needed to be strong for others when all I was doing was creating an island around myself and keeping others out who really could see thru me, and yet I was the only one on the outside — until I shared….then I found others felt the same or could relate to me in a better, different way. Thank you for sharing your not-so-dark, very relatable story that I’m sure has drawn many to you because of your vulnerability which truly is a strength. Love and blessings.
Your vulnerability is an enormous gift to your readers. I’m so glad you’re doing better. Between that, significant sleep deprivation and your eye surgery, you had a few seriously hard couple of years!
I know why…
Erica you are doing heroes work with this. Thank you for your courage and passion.
After 20+ years depression is my constant companion – yes, medicated and managed, but never far from my thoughts. I fear for my grown children. It’s hard to live with the possible consequences my illness may have had, or will have, on their lives… their children.
Maybe its because I’m a writer, but every time I read an articulate – even strangely beautiful – accounting of someone’s depression I find it a tiny bit more manageable on my end. William Styron wrote “darkness visible”. I always hand that small book to people who need an insight into something so difficult to communicate, especially when one is in the throes.
Like I said – I know why. Weeks like this when the topic is brought into the light of day are both terrifying and comforting. Not everyone wins this battle. I’m thankful I have thus far.
I can’t thank you enough~
Thank you. Another great blog that also talks about depression, and anxiety disorder, and still manages to make me laugh out loud (which is really hard to do) is thebloggess.com.
Many, many years ago I lost my favorite uncle to depression, and Robin Williams’ death has brought all those feelings back. I understand now better than I did back then, since now I live with depression too. I will not self-harm because I know that the depression lies, that the darkness will fade into the background again for a while, and that I will once again feel normal.
If nothing else, hopefully Robin’s death will let us talk about depression for a while, and hopefully some lives will be saved. A co-worker and I were talking the other day, and she said she didn’t know any one with depression. I said “You know me”, and I think it was a real eye-opener for her. As she said, I am one of the most upbeat, positive people she knows. I fake it really well in public. She has another friend that she is worried about, and we had a great talk about how to bring the subject up, how to reach out to someone you care about, and how insidious depression can be. I saw a description online, and it said that depression was arthritis of the soul. Apt, I think.
Just wanted to add my thanks and support for voicing your story. I’m a firm believer in sharing our stories with one another, especially the ones that feel so loaded with stigma. I’ve shared similar parts of my own story on my little blog. I’ve been on antidepressants for the past two years, and will continue taking my daily pill (thankfully) if that’s what’s needed to keep me and my family safe and happy.
Erica, thanks so much for sharing this. It’s always a huge help to those of us who have traveled that dark and scary road to know that we aren’t alone.
Erica, I’m proud of you for posting this. I’m pregnant right now and struggling with severe antenatal depression, and likely PPD in a couple of months. This is something nobody prepares you for, and there’s such a stigma around discussing it. We’re supposed to keep it quiet and never admit that it’s hard, that we feel broken, how terrifying it is. Well honestly, fuck that noise.
We SHOULD talk about this and support each other, and get rid of the stigma that keeps moms bottled up about this. It doesn’t mean we’re weak or stupid or anything negative – it means we’re human beings who have valid health issues, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of!
I’m proud of you for seeking help and realizing you weren’t okay. I’m not okay, either. I’m on Zoloft, too, and it does wonders. You should never, ever have to suffer, and you did a brave thing by reaching out for help.
It takes some serious balls to admit publicly you’re dealing with stuff like this, to encourage others to seek help if they need it.
There is no shame in needing help. You’re an amazing author, a wonderful mom, and a lot of us look up to you. I sure do, and I find myself really looking up to you more now that I know you deal with this, too. <3
Stay strong, and remember that you're not alone!
THANK you.
Thank you for posting this. I have been living with depression since my senior year in high school (which was nigh on fifteen years ago) and what you wrote pretty much hit the nail on the head. Not everyone who is depressed has something to be depressed about. I had nothing to be depressed about, and yet there were times that getting myself out of bed was an insurmountable goal. It does get better, it has gotten better, but when you’re wandering aimlessly through that dark valley and its next to impossible to even imagine that something good could happen again, that is often when people choose to give up. It helped me when I was depressed to hear the stories of those who were once as sad as I was, but were now laughing and thriving again. It helped me to hang on. I hope your story will help someone else to hang on too.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for sharing so openly about this topic. I’ve had my own issues with this horrible monster, so seeing people “out” it is really encouraging. From your blogging over the years I would never have known you were going through this. Some people simply shrink away from society, (myself included – yeah, that’s where I went for a while), but to keep connected during all of that says a lot! I can’t help but think that it impacts your writing only for the better, as well as your compassion of course. Also, I think an urban homesteading blog absolutely IS the place to discuss mental health issues! We need to talk about it more, everywhere. Anyway, good work, and congrats again on all of your recent accomplishments! I love stopping by your blog to see what you have cooking.
Erica, I am coming out of a severe depressive episode, which is why I didn’t read this post until now.
Over a period of a couple of days, the antidepressants I have been taking for years simply stopped working. It is autumn here in the Northeast, and autumn has always been my favorite season — the colors, the smells, the warm days and crisp nights. And I simply was not THERE for it.
I am so very lucky to have friends who sent love and Reiki and prayers — but it took one special friend to get me off my couch and to get me to call my Primary. Because I discovered that prescribing psychiatrists don’t accept Medicare. I guess it doesn’t much surprise me. The days of noble practitioners of medicine are pretty much past. Thank God my Primary, who has been my doctor for about 30 years, is compassionate, understanding, and can consult with psychiatrists without paying $200/hour.
Thank you for speaking about it. Mental illness in general has always been a closet issue. We have thankfully evolved past the point where they would shut the mentally ill in a hole in the ground with a grate over the top. But it’s still not accepted as a “genuine” disease. There are so many of us (just looking over all the previous posts it’s quite obvious) who are victims, and so few who truly understand.
I am glad you shared. A number of people are dealing with this. Often it is a seasonal thing.
There are lights for seasonal disorder and also medications. God Bless You and Thank you
for sharing.
Greetings! Wow. Over 100 comments in a 24-hour period, with more still coming. Can you just picture all the nerves your post has struck?
I only ran across this blog entry because I was looking for more information on your trek into hugelkultur. Although I didn’t read all the replies, I appear to be different from the vast majority of your respondents by my being male. I suffer from dysthymia, which is like a constant low-grade infection: you may have a fever, but it’s not enough of a fever to set off anyone’s alarm bells. It’s related to my ADHD, in that the same brain chemistry that makes me ADHD also gives me dysthymia (it’s common for ADHD and long-term depression to be co-morbid.) Since this appears to be related to my brain chemistry/structure, I’ll undoubtedly be on meds the rest of my life. That’s cool, and I seriously wish I had been diagnosed back in high school, so my life would have been significantly different.
I’m glad you’ve been able to be treated for your depression. In my case, I come from a large family of medical doctors (one of them a neurologist), psychologists, and special needs therapists. And yet, despite their being around and treating people who were ADHD or depressed, not one of them made the connection that I, too, might not be doing one of my stupid person tricks but might actually have something other that the lack of will to JUST PAY ATTENTION FOR ONCE!
I was only diagnosed when, after years of mental and occasional physical abuse from my (now ex) wife, she decided she was tired of dealing with my sh*t and I needed to see a doctor. At age 35, after a lifetime of being told it was all my fault, I finally got a diagnosis, which lead to medications and counseling, which led to me finally file for a divorce and learning to live an abuse-free life. (Don’t EVER believe for one moment that spousal abuse is something that only affects women.)
Just yesterday I started on my increased dosage of my antidepressant — my first modification of my meds in 15 years. I’m looking forward to feeling the results. I’m glad you’re on meds and that you’re doing better. Please, keep fighting the good fight.
Muzhik, I want to thank you for this post. After 20 years on medication (with many tweaks along the way), I went off my meds out of frustration that yet another drug wasn’t working. In seeking medication, I will come armed with your story, as I too suffer from ADD as well as depression, and maybe that will lead to a new approach. Also, I’m glad you left your abuser and hope your family can accept your diagnosis.