It’s been awhile since I’ve written.  What I want to tell you is that I’ve been super busy with two teenagers and school and work and I just haven’t had the time.  And that is partly true.  What I don’t want to admit is that I’ve been dealing with the worst bout of depression I’ve had in fifteen years.  Isn’t that curious?  After all the things I’ve shared in this blog (over-shared, I KNOW some say), why would I hesitate to talk about this latest—and heaviest—battle with the beast?

I must admit, the question gives me pause.  I don’t buy into the claims about mental illness that society at large has adopted.  I don’t EVER view my patients as weak or stupid or incapable or hopeless.  But damnit the stigma still exists.  Just because *I* don’t think those things, I know a lot of people do.  I can’t tell you how many times recently I’ve been asked, “Jen, what’s going on that has you depressed?” Sigh.  And I know that depression can be situational/reactionary to events in our lives, but my depression has almost never been that.  Mine is this hideous biochemical bullshit that rears its ugly head every so often.  Usually it’s shorter and more manageable episodes.  This one is oppressive and crushing.  The cognitive slowing this time is profound.  Makes life very challenging.

And it makes me laugh, some of the advice that even I give to my depressed patients:  “Try opposite action,” I tell them.  Um, when I feel like this, and you lecture me on what I “should” be doing, I want to throat punch you.  When I talked to my therapist about this, she kindly reminded me that I actually am doing a good bit of opposite action, already, because I always go to work and I always get my homework completed.  That’s nice, I suppose, but I promise you I’m rethinking how I approach my severely depressed patients.

In my last therapy session, I told Dr B, “Okay, now today I’m going to need you to tell me what to do to fix this because I can’t tolerate it anymore.”  We both chuckled [LIES:  She chuckled; my soul is dead] but did come up with a bit of a (non)action plan:  Just get through.  Just coast.  If I have the energy, fight the negative/suicidal thoughts, but in lieu of that, don’t do anything to make them worse.  That changes how I’ll interact with my patients.  I’ll probably still push them to go to groups (because I KNOW that will help them just as going to my therapy helps me), but my approach will be different.  Because I’ve been reminded of how oppressive this illness is.

I start a new medication today.  I didn’t want to start on a weekday when I was working.  I’m unbelievably nervous about it.  Sometimes more knowledge isn’t a good thing, and it pisses me off that I’m in this place again.  I mean, REALLY pisses me off.

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

Oh my gosh.  I do buy into the stigma.  I do.  I don’t for my patients at all, for a second.  But when it comes to me?  I judge myself by this bullshit society definition of what mental illness is and what it means about people that suffer from it.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t bat an eye over sharing with you or taking a new med or telling people that I’m dealing with depression instead of, “I’m sorry; I can’t; I have a headache.” [standard denial of any/all requests]

I recently told someone this feels like a heavy, wet, wool blanket covering me that I can’t get out from under.  It’s suffocating and uncomfortable and irritating and frustrating and it feels like no matter what I do, how much kicking or punching or flailing, nothing helps.  Nothing changes.  Now, the magical part of aging is that I *KNOW* that this WILL end, even though every fiber in my being tells me that it won’t.  Even a bout this crushing will eventually lift (honestly, medication or not, studies show it does lift).  It’s the meantime that’s so difficult to manage.

And so, even though I’ve recently gotten criticism for being too open, sharing too much, and being too “depressing” in my writing, I had to go here today.  I have always said that I’d rather have the ugly truth than pretty lies.  If you don’t feel that way, you probably shouldn’t read my writing.

And now, off to take a brand spanking new medication.  The fact that Thursday (the day I got the script called in) was Groundhog’s Day isn’t lost on me.  I’ve been here many, many, MANY times before.  Too many times before, but, gratefully, not in over fifteen years.

Fingers crossed.  (Well, on the one hand.  The other hand is flipping the bird to the stigma of mental illness.  A stigma I’m going to reject even when it comes to me.)

Thanks for listening today.  This wasn’t fun or pretty.  I know that.  I appreciate you sitting with it along side of me.