Talking About It

I want you to think about something very carefully before you continue to read this and as you respond to this. I'm trusting you with some very sensitive and important information about my life and my thoughts about it. If you can handle that, keep on reading. If not, please leave. Thank you.

A year ago today I was feeling very confident that my life was only going to get better. I was about to leave for my third year of school, I was seeing a boy I was crazy about, and I was finally going to get treatment for my depression.

Yes, that's right. Depression. I'm talking to you about it because the only thing worse than suffering from depression is trying to pretend it's not there. It worsens the pain and intensifies the loneliness. I'm trying to get you to understand a bit of me that I'm trying to improve upon. It's not a gloom that will dissipate with some "cheering up." It's not a lack of gratitude or satisfaction for and with my life. I want the stigma of depression as a disease to go away. I want your support, and keeping it a secret won't get me that.

Since high school, maybe even junior high, my default mood seemed to be sad and lonely, even when I had no reason to be. I didn't have energy and motivation expected of me. My grades were not as good as they could have been. I would spend hours crying and trying to figure out why. Once home for my first summer in college, it escalated to feelings of uselessness, of unloved and unworthy. My work slipped and I ate only when I felt I deserved to. I even had a plan. I had to move back in with my parents to keep myself from spiraling any further down, but I didn't improve much. I went back to school having promised my mom I would seek help. I was too proud to keep that promise then.

I did alright for the next year. I muddled through as I had before, with the sadness just being a part of me. But the crying started again when I came home last summer. It happened more frequently and with an intensity that kept my brothers awake in the other rooms. By the end of the summer, I finally had an appointment to deal with it. I had decided that I would take them for a little while, just until I got into better habits of taking care of myself, and poof! I would be cured.

My doctor asked a few questions about the nature of my depression (there's a spectrum, you know) and gave me a sample of something he promised would help me. And it did. I took those samples for about a month, and I felt great. I stopped hating myself, even when the boy I was crazy about broke up with me in an hour of crisis. But then switched to a cheaper, generic version of those same meds. They made me so sick. I dealt with that for a month before that misery got to be enough to switch again (causing me to miss the two assignments that kept me from an A in one of my favorite classes--and I did poorly in my other classes as well). This one wasn't quite right, either.

This summer I came home to a new antidepressant that I think is working pretty well, as well as an anti-anxiety drug. But I still had many, many radically "down" days. The anti-depressants don't magically make me happy. They lighten the mood enough for me to try to get things done. Most of the time. (And let me tell you, I am going to be on them for much longer than I had expected.) But this summer, I found myself despondent again. I failed my online classes. I didn't much feel like socializing. I just wanted to sleep and read and watch TV. I had no appetite and sometimes an physical revulsion toward food. And I hated that feeling. It's taken a lot of prayer and tears and priesthood blessings, but I made it through.

It's been a very hard year for me, and it might be the first of many. I don't know if it's something I'll ever be able to overcome in this lifetime, but I am certainly going to do the best I can. I believe that this trial, just like everyone else's, is meant to help me learn to depend on Christ and gain a better understanding of His Atonement. I don't know what the causes of my depression are (I know it's not because I'm a bad person--I know that I'm not), but I do know that I'm on Earth now for a purpose, and I know that if I can stay faithful to the Gospel I know to be true, my Heavenly Father won't let depression stand in my way.