I was in third grade when I had my first depressive episode. I only vaguely remember it, as a period of time when I was so miserable I made my parents nuts. And there was no real reason for me to be miserable, though I remember blaming it on the fact that I didn't have any friends. I was painfully shy by then, and a target for bullying.
It's always been a part of my life since then, though I wasn't diagnosed til my late teens. My first shrink was when I was still in middle school, and she was worthless. My parents were still in heavy denial, not wanting to believe there was something genuinely wrong with me. And the shrink basically just confirmed everything they said, and sent me off home 'all fixed.' Only I wasn't all fixed.
It's followed me around, coming back every few years at first. Then every year. Then every two months. Every episode was worse. I went through three therapists, four medications. I dropped out of school (twice), I quit a job, I lost my ability to be independent and had to move back in with my parents (twice). I was an inevitable train wreck.
Things are a little different now. I like to think that I cope with things a lot better than I did. I have a shrink that I like well enough, a psychiatrist that I adore, and a medication that keeps me from completely going over the edge (so far.) I love the medication I'm on now, and I want to stay on it. It's the only thing I've ever taken that has made me feel like the me I know best, rather than like a shoddy reproduction of me ironed flat and toneless. It also doesn't strip me of my sexual and/or affectionate nature. The problem is that I'm on the maximum recommended dose. I didn't start there, but it seems every six months to a year, I have to up it just a little. And I think I need to again, but god, I'm not prepared for the hell that is switching depression meds.
I don't think my boyfriend is either. I know where I am right now. I'm in that gray land, the twilight between depression and a bad day. And I can't even bring myself to tell him, because he can't fix it, but I think he'll probably try. Or he'll be too attentive and make me feel worse for drawing attention to my own dysfunction.
Self-efficacy is a little like self-confidence, it determines whether or not you believe that you're capable of achieving a certain goal. One of my textbooks says that it can be a bad or good thing, when it comes to a stressor or difficult life situation. In the face of something that is beyond your control, it is likely to cause greater distress. Maybe that's one place I shoot myself in the foot. It isn't that I don't believe I can conquer my depression. It's that I do believe that, but I probably can't.
I still have moments of fear that I am fighting a hopeless, losing battle by trying to stay alive at all. That kind of thinking is what frightens me the most. Sometimes my body wins out over my mind, and I find myself completely locked up and unable to physically accomplish what I am mentally prepared for. I remember blacking out a few times early in high school ... suddenly finding myself somewhere else without knowing how I got there.
But I know it isn't all brain chemistry. The depression is, but my fucked up inability to tell anyone I'm afraid, or hurting, or angry? That isn't brain chemistry. Somewhere back there, something broke me, and hid a few pieces beyond my reach. Something forged a connection in my mind, and maybe at some point there was conscious thought associated with that connection. There isn't anymore.
How do I unlearn something that feels like an autonomic reflex?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Once Upon A Time
This is a beginning.
It probably isn't obvious, so I thought I would define it right up front. It sure as hell isn't an ending, but I can't bring myself to jump right in either. After all, this isn't fiction. I can't you into the middle of the action and let you learn as you go, or you'll probably never figure out what's going on, never mind the fact that it's a real life so ... not much action, really. So this is a beginning.
The problem with this statement is that I don't know where to start. I'm not going to be self-deprecatingly dishonest and say that there's nothing interesting to say, not any relevant and potentially interesting history. Nor am I going to fall into that self-obsessed cesspool of believing that I am the star and that you are just desperate to hear every thrilling detail of my tragic past (you'll laugh, you'll cry, etc.)
There's actually probably quite a bit I could tell you about my background that would catch interest and entertain--at least for a few minutes. And I am, at heart, a storyteller. I am not above using my own experiences as tales with which to regale my friends, family, random acquaintances, etc. But that is not what this is for. Really, my past is not a story. It's my past, it's a part of my life, and I had to live it. The good parts, the bad parts, all of it.
Lately I have been haunted more by the bad than the good, and haunted enough that I don't particularly want to talk about those experiences in terms of a story. Which is probably exactly why I should be writing about them here. Because this is my journal, really, my place to be unabashedly inside my own head. I'm not so great at that off of paper. I know there's a huge discrepancy between what I show people I am, and what I really am inside my head.
Sometimes I'm not sure why people want to be around me, what my friends and boyfriend like about me. And this isn't some crying whinging "Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, bring on the worms" things ... nor is it "If they really knew what I'm like they wouldn't like me." It's actually almost the opposite. I think the person I am inside is worth liking and worth being around, but I'm not showing that. I'm not behaving 'authentically' as my shrink would say. Can people really not tell that--for all intents and purposes--I'm not real? I'd think they would sense that and draw away. But they don't. Sometimes that worries me.
So perhaps you will come to know me better than anyone else does. Which is funny, because at this point, I do not intend to give my name, my location, or really any identifying information at all. Just my mind, like it is inside me, instead of what it is filtered into the outside world.
It probably isn't obvious, so I thought I would define it right up front. It sure as hell isn't an ending, but I can't bring myself to jump right in either. After all, this isn't fiction. I can't you into the middle of the action and let you learn as you go, or you'll probably never figure out what's going on, never mind the fact that it's a real life so ... not much action, really. So this is a beginning.
The problem with this statement is that I don't know where to start. I'm not going to be self-deprecatingly dishonest and say that there's nothing interesting to say, not any relevant and potentially interesting history. Nor am I going to fall into that self-obsessed cesspool of believing that I am the star and that you are just desperate to hear every thrilling detail of my tragic past (you'll laugh, you'll cry, etc.)
There's actually probably quite a bit I could tell you about my background that would catch interest and entertain--at least for a few minutes. And I am, at heart, a storyteller. I am not above using my own experiences as tales with which to regale my friends, family, random acquaintances, etc. But that is not what this is for. Really, my past is not a story. It's my past, it's a part of my life, and I had to live it. The good parts, the bad parts, all of it.
Lately I have been haunted more by the bad than the good, and haunted enough that I don't particularly want to talk about those experiences in terms of a story. Which is probably exactly why I should be writing about them here. Because this is my journal, really, my place to be unabashedly inside my own head. I'm not so great at that off of paper. I know there's a huge discrepancy between what I show people I am, and what I really am inside my head.
Sometimes I'm not sure why people want to be around me, what my friends and boyfriend like about me. And this isn't some crying whinging "Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, bring on the worms" things ... nor is it "If they really knew what I'm like they wouldn't like me." It's actually almost the opposite. I think the person I am inside is worth liking and worth being around, but I'm not showing that. I'm not behaving 'authentically' as my shrink would say. Can people really not tell that--for all intents and purposes--I'm not real? I'd think they would sense that and draw away. But they don't. Sometimes that worries me.
So perhaps you will come to know me better than anyone else does. Which is funny, because at this point, I do not intend to give my name, my location, or really any identifying information at all. Just my mind, like it is inside me, instead of what it is filtered into the outside world.
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