I’ve been trying to write this post for weeks, but it’s so hard to try and get all of these feelings into words. 6 weeks ago, I was put on antidepressants because I legitimately no longer could see the end of the tunnel that is my future. When my doctor asked how long I’ve felt ‘depressed’, I could only laugh and tell her it was like asking the first time I looked into a mirror. I’ve been depressed for longer than I can remember, back in high school I used to come home and sleep immediately because I didn’t want to be alive. I regularly thought about ways to end my life. In undergrad, it got a bit better, I was surrounded by an amazing support system I had built myself. But since I moved to Wisconsin, those dark shadows came back full force.
The thing about depression, and likewise, anxiety, is that even though objectively you know that it’s lying to you, it wears you down enough to just believe it all. Your own brain is your worst enemy. Every day I wake up and it starts. ‘You’re a piece of shit’ ‘Why can’t you do anything right?’ ‘You waste your life and everyone else who’s forced to put up with you’ just a bit of internal monologue from this morning. Depression is also a bitch in that it makes you so exhausted. I would sleep 10+ hours before I got on these pills, now these damn things have me sleeping sometimes upwards of 13 hours. 13!
Let’s unpack these pills by the way. It’s been 6 weeks, the only effects I’ve gotten from them is sleeping more and vomiting or being sick every day. My anxiety and self-loathing and depression has only seemed to get worse. The other day my internal monologue somehow directly quoted Bojack Horseman as I stared at myself in the mirror ‘You’re a stupid piece of shit, but at least you know you’re a piece of shit which makes you better than those pieces of shit that don’t realize it’.
I feel as if I’m treading water in a deep ocean and I don’t know how to swim. These pills are supposed to act like a life vest or maybe floaties. And at the start, I guess it was placebo, I thought they were helping me keep my head above water. But now I’ve found that all they feel like is as though they’re weighted with rocks, not air. It’s a constant struggle to keep my head above water. Every task I fail to complete, every thing I have no energy to do, act as though they are tidal waves crashing down upon me, sending me down deeper.
I am fortunate in that I have some wonderful friends here who help me resurface. They bring me back up. But the first rule of drowning is you can’t save someone else if they’re going to pull you down with them. I don’t expect my friends to try and pull me out, all I’ll do is drag them down with me. I need to learn to swim. But first I need to get my head above water long enough. Last week, my dear friend Marshall told me that I’m on his emergency contacts that bypass do not disturb mode when I finally told him I’m fucked in the head. It took everything I had not to cry in public at that point. Yesterday, I got a book in the mail from my Amazon wishlist that I had not ordered. My amazing friend Angie had mailed me a book from my wishlist knowing I was not doing well. I cried so hard. These things are the tangible way I can tell the nagging darkness in my head to go to hell, I am better than it tells me. But then another tidal wave of anxiety and self loathing hits and I lose that confidence.
I guess the big thing with this is what happens if you don’t stay above water. What if you just sink? I haven’t been suicidal in years, until Monday. I spent 2 hours on Monday with horrible intrusive thoughts of just ending this pain. I hid my car keys for a bit because all I wanted to do was drive to the busiest intersection in town and walk into moving traffic at 50+ MPH. I KNOW it was the medicine at that point. I haven’t been that low in a long time. It was terrifying. I can’t die, what would happen to my cats? That’s my biggest pull. Sidney is stupid **and** stinky, no one would want her! But sometimes instead of just trying to flail and get back to the surface, the thought of the bottom is appealing. I know I don’t want to die though, after I had an actual near death experience earlier this year I know that is not what I want. But right now, my brain is just trying to find an out.
I go back to the doctor tomorrow to get off these evil things and try something new. I just want to feel like a person again. To at least float and start trying to doggie paddle out of this despair ocean. I’m sorry to everyone who’s been having to pull me back up or dealing with the tidal waves that crash upon me. I’m trying. I’m trying so hard and I’m not going to stop trying. I just want to get out of this water. I'm sorry.
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