The Swamps of Sadness

There is a history of depression in my family. My parents, my siblings and at least one of my grandparents suffer(ed).

I’m trying to remember when it ‘started’ for me – and I’m going to pin it on my mid teens. I was 15 or 16, probably around year 10. Although I had friends I still never really felt like I fit in anywhere. Not entirely. It was a stressful time at school. It was a stressful time at home (my parents separated for a year).  I was a teenage girl. And I was predisposed to suffer.

Back then though, it was just general sadness and apathy. And I say ‘just’, not to diminish how true and painful depression can be at that stage, but to put my own depression on some kind of scale. As with any mental illness, depression is different for everyone. Is it seasonal depression? Clinical depression? Bi-polar? Post-natal? How severe is it? Suicidal thoughts? Attempts? And so on and so forth.

Because the truth is, I could handle it (I think) if my depression was still just general sadness and apathy. But for me it isn’t.

These days, as a woman in her 20s, depression, for me, looks like this:

• general sadness – the simplest things can reduce me to tears
• general irritability – the simplest things can make me angry beyond words
• sleeping issues – varies from insomnia to physically not being able to drag myself out of bed (last night I went to bed at 5pm, and I still struggled to get out of bed at 7am)
• binge eating
• the voice in my head that constantly tells me that I am worthless, useless, pathetic, fat
• the suicidal thoughts (that, thank goodness, I do not see myself following through on – but more on that another time)
• the anxiety that comes with it (again, more on this another time)
• the heaviness I feel that leaves me literally dragging my feet – I feel like Atreyu in The Neverending Story, trudging through the swamps of sadness, and worry that I’ll give into it the way Artax does

Depression for me comes in peaks and troughs. I can go a couple of weeks feeling fine (although it’s never really gone), and then the dark clouds can come rolling in. Often out of nowhere, even though I’m always looking out for it.

I’ve always avoided medications as I had seen people around me take them for years and years with no effect. This helped establish my position that with something like depression (or anxiety, or any mental illness really) that no treatment is going to work if you don’t want to get better and if you don’t work to get better. I don’t mean to suggest that I think mental illness is something that you can merely snap out of – we’ve all heard it (or perhaps even said it to someone) ‘just be happy’ or ‘just smile more’. I mean that you can’t just pop the pills and expect changes to happen.

I watched someone take pills for years but not change their behaviour.

It’s plastered everywhere, exercise, keep a journal, see a therapist, eat well, go out and do things. A seemingly never ending list of things that can aid in treating depression. But I think too many people take the pills and do nothing else.

However, I am beginning to worry that I have gone to the other extreme. I try doing other things but the depression keeps coming back. And I can’t help but wonder if the pills would help get me out of bed and therefore doing the other things that I think would help the pills on their mission.

Really, I don’t know where I stand with my depression. Sometimes I forget that it’s there, and then it makes it’s presence known and (if I may make a Miley Cyrus reference) comes in like a wrecking ball.

I’m at a point where I should try to find some courage and head to the doctor, but I’m scared to.

And that is how depression plays it’s part in ruling my life.