Depression

I was diagnosed with clinical depression about four years ago. After several months of not eating (my weight dropped to 154) or sleeping (I went about four months on less than 2 hours of sleep a night) I finally found the strength to get some help. That in itself is quite a story. Help came in the form of a little pill. The pill is known as a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. It happens that serotonin is needed to keep emotions stable. When the body lacks the capacity to produce or distribute seratonin efficiently it causes an imbalance and emotions go berserk. Emotions, after all, are chemically and neurologically induced. They don't float out there somewhere outside of our bodies. Emotions are not spiritual, they are physical.

I've been on an anti-depressant ever since. To be honest, I'm afraid to go off of it. The one I use now is Celexa. It manages my depression nicely without sexual side effects (when I was on Lexipro, for example, I could maintain an erection but I couldn't achieve an orgasm). Even so, one thing I've noticed over the past four years, as I've learned more about my depression and how to manage it, is that my depression, even with medication, gets much worse this time of year - mid-December/late January. I know it has much to do with sunlight and warmth. As the days grow shorter and colder I can feel it coming on but there's nothing I seem to be able to do to stop it. SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder is something I've heard about but haven't really studied so I don't now how this relates to me.

The funny thing about depression is that no one wants to hear you have it. It's like mental leprosy. No one wants to touch you. So depression is something I bear mostly alone. No one wants to hear that when I get into these states all I want to do is die. Really? Well, no, it's not that I really, really, want to die for real. I actually enjoy most of what life has to offer. It's just that I want the pain to go away. And when my depression grows to a head there are some days when it feels that the only way to end the pain of depression is to end the life that feels the pain. It's that bad, and that painful. I'd rather have a tooth pulled without Novocain.

When I get really depressed this is what I say to myself over and over: "I am nothing. I have done nothing. I have nothing. I have nothing to give. I have nothing to offer. I am a loser. I am a failure. I have failed at everything I have ever tried. I just want to die." Sometimes I speak this audibly. Sometimes I think it in my head. Either way, the prevailing feelings are those of worthlessness, hopelessness, helplessness and unworthyness. It's a dark hole. Black, dark, and bottomless.

I know my depression will subside again into a more managable form. As days get longer and temperatures rise and I can get outside more and ride my bike more the really dark days will become less frequent. One thing I know for sure. For depression there is no cure. I will alway have depression. It doesn't go away and when I look back over my life with an understanding of its symptoms, I realize that I've been depressed since childhood. It's only in the past four years that I've begun to understand how to manage it.