I had my first depressive episode when I was 15. Depression is a creeping disease. You carry on and carry on and carry on until one day you realize that everything is wrong. I was sat in my room listening to music and I suddenly I realized I didn’t know if I could make it through another week. I realized I was longing to die. Not to take action to end my own life, but just to be erased. To evaporate.
There were moments and flickers in between but my next episode came when I was 26. I would fantasize about turning my bicycle into the path of an oncoming bus on my way to work every day. My skin was numb all the time. I felt trapped in my body. I would eat without tasting and only notice when my stomach began cramping in pain. I had no energy or motivation to do anything. Pretending to be anything but miserable was constantly exhausting. On my birthday, at the most amazing surprise party I’ve ever received, the struggle to enjoy it was physically painful.
My most recent episode came at 34. I knew my ex was leaving before he left. I remember thinking “once he’s gone I’ll just kill myself” in a very matter of fact way. As if it was the most obvious and reasonable solution to the problem. It was nearly a year before I could get through the month (toward the end of the episode I would only have symptoms when I was premenstrual) without wanting to die. It only came home to me that this is an illness that I live with when a friend lent me the book Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression. Wanting to die is my most obvious symptom. As my second therapist pointed out, “healthy people don’t want to die.” It may seem obvious but to me, who had lived with the reoccurring desire to die for so long, it was a eureka moment. I was sick. I needed treatment to get better.
I managed to treat my most recent episode without therapy. Meditation has been my miracle cure. I have learned that my illness grows stronger when I am not taking care of myself. Self-care sounds easy but actually, it’s incredibly hard. Eating well, exercising, spending time outside, not drinking, not working too much, doing things that nourish my soul, taking time to feel and accept whatever I am feeling at any given moment, writing in a journal, getting enough sleep. Getting healthy is slow. Recovery is boring. I know what a struggle it is to stay alive when you want to die. To take each tiny step back towards the light. To choose to not drink, not obliterate the pain with sex or drugs or a social life, but just to feel it and accept it and see what it is trying to tell you. But I can promise you that life is worth it. You have so much amazing life to live. Good things are coming. They are on their way. This is a passing storm and you come out stronger, cleaner and brighter on the other side. I promise.
#endthestigma
monologomy 