I recently started taking anti-depressants again. I'm having a really difficult time with having had to do this.
Depression isn't a new thing for me by any means. I don't remember there being life before Depression. I've heard of some people having a fairly sudden onset of Depression. This was not the case with me. I don't have many clear memories of my childhood, but I do remember my fifth grade teacher recommending my mother take me to see a therapist. I don't clearly remember much other than the fact that I did go to one session. I don't know why it didn't continue.
I was suicidal in middle school. I remember one day contemplating dousing myself in nail polish remover and setting myself on fire. That's around the time I went on antidepressants for the first time, but that didn't last long. Again, I don't remember why.
The worst was when I was in college. I went away to college. Far away enough that I felt like I was having the "away at college" experience, but close enough that I could still see my best friends, who were a year younger than me. I was excited for college. Until I got there. My roommate barely spoke to me and told me from day one she wanted to room with somebody she'd met at orientation. I didn't make friends on my floor. I was a lit major and I didn't read a single book my first semester. I had a 4.0. So, the academics were garbage. And even more upsetting was, even though I was less than an hour away, my friends from high school never came to visit. Ever. They were still in high school, so I'd thought they would all jump at the opportunity to stay on a college campus for a weekend every once in a while. Nope. I wasn't learning, I wasn't having fun, I missed my cat, so I transferred to a university about fifteen minutes away from my mom's house and moved back home at the end of the semester. I went to the new school feeling like a complete failure. We always hear how great college is and blah blah blah. No. You lied to me, Judd Apatow! There was no Seth Rogen living on my floor, being adorable and mischievous. My roommate was not my best friend. I *did* end up meeting Loudon Wainwright while I was in college, but not because of college.
So I returned home a failure. I was extremely ashamed of everything about myself. So I spent a lot of time in college pretending to be someone else. I put forth a lot of effort trying to prove I was fun. I'm pretty sure I was just regarded as annoying. Probably. I annoyed myself. I hated myself. So much. I'd frequently tell people "I don't want to live here anymore," "here" sometimes referring to the town, sometimes referring to the state, but what I wanted to be saying was "I don't want to live anymore." I changed majors from English to Theatre Design, because, I don't know, I'm stupid. This provided me lots of parties to go to and pretend I was fun. I could drink everybody under the table and I was always the last person to leave, because I was just that much fun, dammit! I convinced myself I was going to be a lighting designer and a damn good one. All the while, I kept wishing I wasn't there. I thought if I could move, it would get better. So when I got an opportunity to take a summer internship in another state, I jumped at it. I packed my car and drove away to a new place, where I still pretended I was fun in the way I thought people wanted me to be. While I was there, my suicidal thoughts began to run rampant. I'd go to work and look around for things I could use to kill myself. I never made any attempts, but I saw opportunities everywhere. I was an assistant lighting designer, so a big part of my job was hanging lights. Walking around on catwalks and going up in scissor lifts with long pieces of cable, you get a lot of ideas about how you could die. I'd go home and take pills. Never a whole bottle, but more than I should have. A lot of drinking happened, and I would purposely do stupid things like get extremely inebriated and take more aspirin than recommended. Sometimes I did this with the idea that I was going to go home and slit my wrists, and this would help me bleed faster. This was when I started smoking, half wanting to fit in with other and half hoping it would bring about my death sooner. Finally, I contacted a psychiatrist who started me on antidepressants and recommended I quit the internship and go home where I at least had a support system.
Again, I returned home feeling like a miserable failure. I couldn't even do what I was studying in college. Before I'd left for the internship, I'd been working as a technician on rentals at my university theatre. On my return, I phoned my boss at that job who I had also regarded as a friend. Foolishly, I was honest and told him I'd come home early because I wasn't doing well emotionally and I would like to return to work. I was not fired, but I was never scheduled to work again. So I was a failure who now was angry and felt betrayed. This led to super pissed off, stand-offish, "everybody leave me the fuck alone" Roz. I don't think many people from college know how badly I wanted to die. While I was taking medication after medication, seeing therapist after therapist, my best friend told me I was a "Negative Fucking Nancy" and proceeded to refuse to speak to me for the next year. The only reason I stayed in college was for spite. I thought about changing my major back to English, but so many people in the theatre department were hinting that I didn't belong there that I was furious and finished the program just to show them.
My senior year, I took a directing class, because it was required for my degree. We were given an assignment in which we created an abstract autobiographical scene. My scene showed me going in to talk a man (representing my boss from the tech job), telling him I had a problem and needed to talk about it. The man's response was to start throwing ping pong balls at me, until I got up, walked out of the room, closed the door, sat down, lit a cigarette, and started crying. The chair of the theatre department was my instructor for that course. She watched my scene, then told my friend who I had brought in to play "the man" he could have thrown the ping pong balls at me in a more believable way. She then pelted me in the face with ping pong balls so hard she actually chipped one of the lenses in my glasses. I directed a one-act play for that class, after which she told me "Huh. I didn't expect you to be able to pull that off."
During my senior year of college, I met a boy in my linguistics class. This was during the kind of whore-ish period of my self-loathing. I went on a date with him after giving a blow job to a guy in my Medieval Literature class. And I wound up falling madly in love with him. The boy (who I'll be calling Nerfherder) and I did all that couply nonsense, such as vacations. Shortly before going on a road trip to Boston, I started a new antidepressant regimen, including Seroquel, a mood stabilizer with some serious sedating effects. This sedative was making it difficult for me to wake up in the morning. Nerfherder berated me for being lazy to the point where I decided my antidepressants weren't worth it and stopped taking them altogether. Not surprisingly, I spiraled.
When Nerfherder and I moved in together, I was working at a job I loved in a small shop. I still had a lot of self-loathing and allowed this job I cared about to be a focal point of my identity. My boss was terminated in January, so I stepped up and took control of the shop with no promotion and no pay raise, just being an interim manager with a metric fuck-ton of overtime until they hired my boss's replacement. So, from January to April, I ran things. Then they brought in a woman who I will call "Rusty Cunt Bucket" (I do believe this is a thing Ari Gold screamed at an object in an episode of "Entourage" and not my own creation). I offered to help RCB with anything she might need help with, letting her know what vendors we ordered what from, etc, etc. RCB told me I was "just a keyholder" and cut me down from the 70 hours a week I'd been working to 5. I was devastated beyond words. That wasn't just some job to me. It was the thing I was most proud of in my adult life. It was my redemption for all of the self-hatred. And out of nowhere, I was told I wasn't valued or even necessary. Hell, I wasn't even wanted. I quit and took a job I hated. That was when I finally began to actually hurt myself.
I had lost a significant part of my identity. So I started making my relationship with Nerfherder the focal point of my identity. But he was becoming increasingly distant. So one night, while doing the dishes, I picked up a kitchen knife and sliced my arm open. I wasn't trying to kill myself, but I was thinking about it. I cut my arm open to see how badly it would hurt. I was curious if I did decided to kill myself, would slitting my wrists be a reasonable way to go? Would it hurt? Here's the scary thing. It didn't hurt. At all. It didn't bother me even slightly until it started to heal. Then it itched.
One day at work, at the terrible new job, a customer screamed at me and threatened to kill me. My boss was standing less than five feet away while this happened, and she allowed it to happen. I already felt stupid and unliked and altogether unwelcome at that job, and my boss standing behind me while a customer threatened to kill me really drove home the feeling of not being wanted. After the customer left, I excused myself to go to the restroom. Where I stabbed myself in the leg. Not like "Oh, if I feel a little physical pain, it'll distract from the emotional pain" pinch. That sumbitch bled all over the place. To this day, my leg goes numb for extended periods of time. I quit that job quite soon after that with no contingency plan.
Then my worst fear became true. Nerfherder left me. I came home one night and he told me it was over. There went the last shred of the identity I'd worked so hard to build for myself. My partner, who I'd planned to spend the rest of my life with, was suddenly gone. I'd come to regard his family as my own, and now they were gone. My home was gone. Everything.
A lot of my friends and loved ones were, understandably, concerned for my well-being. I was basically on an informal suicide watch. My mom called off work the first two days so I wouldn't be alone for a minute. And yeah, I was crushed. I had no idea how to go on. But a weird thing happened. After about two weeks, I didn't want to die. I ran off to New York City for a brief period of time to be with a friend. I got a new job. I started preparations to move about an hour south. Still sad? Yes. Of course. But I was able to pick up and carry on. I was okay.
I was pretty sure I was invincible. I mean, I'd lost everything, and I was still going. Since then, some seriously bad things have happened. I met another man to whom I became engaged, until he forced himself on me while I was asleep. I called off my wedding. Yeah. I called off a wedding and was okay. I got fired from the job I moved down here for. That was actually fine. I hated that job. I still think it's one of the best things that ever happened to me. I got a new job; one I really like. Met another guy, who spent our entire relationship lying to me and ultimately stole a large sum of money from me. While I was angry, I was still okay. None of this sent me into a spiral.
I live with my cat, who is just all sorts of fantastic. My dog, who is also all sorts of fantastic, lives with me part of the time. I don't have to argue with anybody that yes, it is always time to watch sci-fi, especially if said sci-fi is "Doctor Who." I've been seeing an amazing man for about five months and am just completely nuts about him. He doesn't assault me or steal from me; he just makes me happy and makes me feel loved and wanted. His family is incredibly. I adore his mother and she seems to genuinely like me too. I'm earning money writing. I've lost almost ten pounds in the last month. There is so much good going on in my life right now.
So why the fuck am I having a depressive episode? The good in my life right now FAR outweighs the bad. But I've been having panic attacks. I've had nights of sitting on my couch crying over nothing. A few days ago, I was opening boxes at work, glanced at my box cutter, and thought, "Hey, I could sink this into wrist!" What the Hell is that about?! I called my doctor and have been started on Zoloft. I'm awaiting an appointment in March to return to an ambulatory psychiatric program I was in while in college. But I'm having a really hard time with this. I thought I was going to be okay. I thought I was cured. I thought I was never going to have to deal with again. I feel unbelievably betrayed by my body.
A thought occurred to me today. When there was so much bad happening and I wasn't having problems with Depression, what if my body was overcompensating? There's definitely a chemical imbalance in my brain. I don't think anybody would ever attempt to dispute that. Between the Depression and the chronic insomnia, my serotonin levels are just FUBAR. But I think my body instinctively wants to stay alive. It's basic evolution. It'll do what it takes to remain living. So when all of these horrible things were going on, I think my body just overrode the chemical imbalance, overrode the Depression. That instinct to stay alive just took over. But now that things are okay, my body doesn't have to work as hard at surviving. It doesn't have to have every imaginable defense up. I hold my cat, I look into Boyfriend's eyes, I open my check from my freelance work, and I know there's good in the world. And I can relax. And those defenses go down, my body stops overworking itself, and the Depression bubbles back up, because things are so okay that I don't have to constantly fight it.
It may sound incredibly messed up that I'm saying "I think I'm Depressed because things are okay." But I actually take comfort in this thought. I find it comforting that even my own body is relaxing and letting me be me. I wish this wasn't a part of me, but it is. I don't think Boyfriend is ever going to try to bully me out of taking my medication. I think he's going to continue to accept me as I am. I don't have to hide this anymore. Wonky train of thought? Probably. But I think it's going to be okay.
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