Regressing

Regressing

Sorry I haven't written in a while, but like I said this is an ongoing journey and I'm nowhere near the end,  I Thought I was doing good and then "Wham" Back in bed I was for over a week.  That's the thing I can't understand with depression.  You can be feeling great for a while and then all of a sudden, for no reason, your spiraling down out of control. 


I am having a hard time right now trying to just understand why I just can't be fixed.  Why can't I just say to myself  " You are getting out of bed, stop this shit, and get on with your life?"  Why can't it just be that easy?  Why can't I have control of my own brain?

Do you know that the only way you can get into the great mental health programs like Dr. Phil is always talking about is to fork up around  $70,000.00?  He doesn't bother bringing up that little point on his show.   I emailed him about this little oversight, but I haven't heard back yet. :)  (not holding my breath).

You always hear "Money isn't everything", but you know what, that is kind of a lie.  To receive great health care, especially mental health care, you have to have money.  So what I take from that is if I want to have a normal life and be a normal mother, I'm going to have to rob a bank.  (just kidding!).

Well I am going to stop griping and feeling sorry for myself today.  I will post again soon

Going back to 2008

Going back to 2008

The death of my mom in December 2008 was hard.  It wasn't until I started trying to piece together what was happening to my life that I realized just how hard it affected me.  At the time I thought I was just fine.  A day after her death I went to a New Years Eve party. 

We had the funeral. All my family came down.  It had been the first time I had been with my brothers since my dad's death 11 years earlier.  It was just like a family reunion except mom wasn't there. 

The funeral was the last time I cried about her death at the time. That year, in my eyes, was normal.  I don't remember anything else remarkable happening, but without me realizing, things were happening inside my head. I was fighting a lot with my teenage daughter.  My job was starting to go down hill.  in my eyes it was just small things.   It still would be another year before I realized I was disappearing down a very dark hole.  It would be another year before i would begin the fight to get back my life and the real me.  If someone would have told me in November of 2008 how my life was going to turn, I would have thought they were crazy.

The spring of 2009 I changed to the nightmare job.   It was awful and I hated every minute of it.  The last day I was there, my boss said one day he would come in and kill us all.  I left that day.

That was when the anxiety started.  I didn't want to go anywhere, especially alone.  I knew I needed to work but I just couldn't make myself do it.  I got on unemployment and just rode on it for over a year, sliding farther away from life everyday.  I was staying in bed most of the time.  My GP was trying different antidepressants and they were not working.  Nothing was working until Superbowl of 2010.  I thought I had found the answer to all my problems.  Boy how wrong I was.  I was beginning to turn my whole life upside down and completely disappear.

The Year I Disappeared

My normal life

The Year I Disappeared

I used to be normal.  I had a normal life, with three perfect kids, a husband, and a great job.  I could go anywhere I wanted and I did.  Vacations, the mall, the lake, where ever I wanted to go.  I could also go to the Grocery Store.

The "Grocery Store" A big one.

I went to the grocery store today for the first time in two years...

I disappeared two years ago.  This is my journey of fighting my way back to my normal life and the real me. A life before clinical depression.

If you know what clinical depression is, you will understand my journey.  If you don't know what clinical depression is then drop to your knees and thank God.

I am not entirely sure why or when it happened just that around that time a lot of big things impacted my life.  My mother died, my daughter went to live with her dad and stopped speaking to me, and I change to a new job that literally turned out to be a nightmare.  I  remember the last day I went to that job, I got in my car, crying and called my husband to come get me because I couldn't drive the 40 minutes home. 

I guess it was probably an accumulation of traumatic events that caused me to slip away until one day i was just gone.

What were my two teenage boys that still lived at home doing?  I don't know, I was gone.  Why did my marriage disintegrate?  I don't know, I was gone.  What were all my friends doing?  I don't know, I was gone.  I didn't exist anymore.

This journal is about my journey to find "me" again. Because I don't remember a lot from the earlier times, those entries will be more broad time frames.  As we get closer to the present they should get more precise.

So stay with me and ride the ride of clinical depression, and together we will find out how it ends.  I will make it back.  I know I can find my way.