Surviving More Depressive Episodes

 I thought I was done with depression once I was medicated.  I was wrong.  I am in the midst of a depressive episode as I type this.  It has been like this since last Thursday.  I think it peaked late Saturday, but I saw very little improvement yesterday or today.  I don't want to be at work today, but at least I wanted to get out of bed.  That's a step forward out of this current episode.  I didn't want to get out of bed on Saturday.  I didn't even want to exist.  I wanted to be invisible again.  It's incredibly difficult to coach when I feel this way.  I am trying to help people when I can't even help myself.  I am trying to make members lives better while I am slowly falling apart on the inside.  Some notice the difference, some don't.  The people close to me see it the second I walk in the door.  I feel and look like a zombie.  I am emotionless. I am not receptive to conversation.  I am much more passive and agreeable.  I don't think I am instinctively disagreeable, but I am skeptical of most people.

 People ask me what depression feels like.  Some people have equated it to the loss of a pet or family members.  I have lost both and those experiences aren't remotely close to how depression feels.  Depression feels like my brain is trying to kill me.  It's death by a thousand cuts, but from the inside.  My brain doesn't want me to get better.  It wants me to give up.  It has conversations in my head that aren't my own.  Not so much hearing voices, but the conversations just aren't centered around my thoughts.  I suppose that is hearing voices to an extent.  I never thought I would be fighting myself to survive each day.

 I used to dismiss people that suffered from depression and killed themselves as selfish and cowardly.  To those people, I sincerely apologize.  Now that I am battling depression, I get it.  I understand why they did what they did.  I understand how they finally had enough.  I understand what drove them to make such an apparently irrational decision.  Unfortunately, it's entirely rational when you just want it to stop.  You want your brain to stop telling you things.  You want your brain back on your side.  You want your brain to function like it's supposed to (however that is).

 I am mentally ill.  I am humiliated.  I am scared of what may come next.  I have to accept the fact that I am not well.  I hate that I am this way.  I have not accepted who I am and who I have become.  I have tried to go back in time and think of when I wasn't sick.  Recent behavior changes are alarming.  The temper tantrums.  The conversations in my head that are not my own.  My brain telling me to stop everything.  My brain is an asshole again and I want it to stop.  I need it to stop, but it won't.  It persists in telling me I am sick and must accept that I can't function without medication.  It tells me that I am less of a man because I need help.  That I am a coward for not solving this problem on my own.  In my gut, I know these things aren't true.  Ming assures me these things aren't true.  I know my gut is right.  I know she is right.  My brain just isn't convinced.  It sees weakness and capitalizes on it at every turn.

 Ming told me yesterday to call her if I ever reached the point where I had enough.  I broke down in tears because it just doesn't work that way.  I wish it did, but depression doesn't work that way.  Depression is irrational.  I want it all to stop more than anything I have wanted in my entire life.  Stop torturing me as I try to survive another day.  Depression doesn't care who it hurts.  It doesn't care about the trail of destruction it leaves.  It is a mental hurricane and acts without compassion or remorse.  The lives it takes are inconsequential.  It will continue its destructive path until it stops by force through medication and treatment or by attrition leading to death.  These facts are true no matter how I look at them.  I am not in control of my illness yet.  I am unstable and uncertain.  I am scared of what symptom of my illness will expose itself next.  It could be tomorrow or a week from now, but I have this feeling of impending doom.  I am fighting for my life in a way I never thought I would have to.  I am fighting to exist in a world that equates depression to sadness or the death of a pet or family member.  I would take those things a thousand times over compared to the hell I am in right now.