I wrote this piece many years ago, but never shared it before. Happy reading.
For anyone who has experienced deep depression on any level will understand that it is not something you can just easily walk away from. A person who has never been depressed, or just slightly so, would never say it to your face, but you can catch glimpses of expressions that they think you should just “get over it”. Like it is just that easy to decide that you are done being depressed and just move on. Some people can actually do that, and I cannot count how many times I wished it would have been that easy. For those like me, it is anything but.
I believe through my entire life I have had depression. I was raised in a stable and loving family, but I can remember all the times I just felt sad for no reason at all. When something really sad happened, it felt like the end of the world. Through most of this though, I had a stubborn optimistic part of my brain that just kept me going through it. Until the point I hit a brick wall. My baby almost died from pneumonia.
I guess that is not the same as actually losing her. However it was more anxiety producing than anything else I had ever experienced. That mixed with the chaos of postpartum depression, I was a wreck. It was all consuming. I was terrified of anything that could happen to her and couldn’t even leave my house without feeling an overwhelming sense of panic.
It didn’t improve as she started to get a little older either. She didn’t just get up and walk, she got up and ran. It didn’t matter where she ran to, she just had to go. She was also too smart for my own good. By the age of 2 she figured out how to drag things over to our 3 foot fence and climb over it. Only once did she get out to the busy street, but that was enough to send me back into almost constant panic.
Small chores around the house became too much to do. Going out to a movie was no longer relaxing. Imagining putting my head through a glass pane window had crossed my mind once. It was overwhelming, stressful, and my life felt like it was falling apart every day.
The emotions ran high all the time, feeling guilt over not being able to handle the little things anymore and remorse over inviting someone over to an extremely messy house. It is easy to lose yourself in the spiral of not feeling up to doing something, feeling bad for not doing it, then not doing anything because you feel so horrible.
Really taking a look at my life and seeing that depression had not only taken away my life, but had started to define who I was, made me realize I was going to lose everything I cared about if I just continued to go down the bottomless pit. There is no end to depression if you don’t take action. No one can make you choose to do it. It is something that you have to decide for yourself.