Depression

I've always been afraid to go to sleep. I always have had this feeling that if I close my eyes, I will inevitably die in my sleep and never wake up. I used to lie in bed at night, wondering what it would be like to not to exist. I used to try my best to imagine not existing and feeling nothing. As soon as I could feel myself disappearing, I suddenly became conscious of some part of me. As I could feel my mind emptying of my body, I would suddenly get an itch on my arm, drawing my attention back to my body. I would start again, this time picturing complete blackness and then emptying my mind of my body. Just as I thought I could feel nothing, my big toe would twitch. I was trying to forget myself and that I existed. I was seven years old. There was something appealing about not existing. If I was dead, I would not exist. If I didn't exist, I wouldn't have to go to school. I was terrified of school my entire life. My mom used to call it my "school stomach," where every first day of school I would be so anxious that I would make myself sick and I would cry all the way to school. I don't think that as a kid I ever did not have a sore stomach - just like not knowing how to disappear - I didn't know how not to have a sore stomach. It was just always this dull aching that felt like a ball in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't that it was the academics of the school, but more that I went to five different elementary schools and I never fit in at a single one. You think I would have figured it out after the second and third try, but there I always was - the butt of the joke. The subject of the torture. So, I used to lie in bed, wishing I did not exist. Wishing that I could disappear into the night air.

So, I guess it's not too far fetched to imagine that a child who used to wish for death, but simultaneously be scared of it, would later attempt suicide. Not only think about death, but desire it beyond anything else. Thoughts of death would consume me completely. How would I do it? Who would care? Could I do it without anybody knowing? Would they really be sad? If I took a whole bottle of tylenol could I keep it down long enough to die. I would surely pass out before the pain of the overdose took place. If I just drove fast enough and crashed into the median and flew over the bridge - I would have to get knocked out and I could drown without even knowing it. If I drank a whole bottle of vodka, that would kill me right? If I jumped off this bridge - the fall would kill me right? If I just cut the vein in the perfect spot - this would be done. These are the thoughts that used to and still do race through my head. On one of those "bad days," where shit just doesn't seem to be going my way and it suddenly seems like I can't do anything right, death becomes the easiest thing to solve the problems. This isn't normal, I am aware. Most people can make a mistake or have a bad day, but their thoughts don't jump to - how could I best commit suicide at this very moment? A bad grade doesn't send a normal person reeling to thinking that they are the dumbest person in the world and that life will stop, because I got a B. Not only would life stop - but MY life SHOULD stop! I deserve to die and nobody will miss me when I am.

It was high school that made me realize how unbalanced I was. I regularly got bouts of severe, crippling depression. I would show up to school with my physical body, but mentally I would be gone. I would go an entire day without talking to anyone, except to myself in my head, wishing for death or at least for the day to be over so I could crawl into bed and wish to die. I would hide in the bathroom in between classes and just sob. One particularly bad episode, I burst into tears in the middle of class and ran out of the room. At sixteen years old, this is slightly embarrassing, but I couldn't control it. I guess my teacher was slightly shocked by my emotional out burst, my french teacher sent out my girl friend after me. I was slumped on the bathroom floor just sobbing. My breathing was heavy and my chest was racked with sobs. I thought my chest was going to explode. I wished my heart would just stop. Could I give myself a heart attack? I could feel my heart beating out of my chest, I was dizzy, I couldn't catch my breath. The room was spinning. I was coherent enough to see my girlfriend come into the bathroom and I heard her ask, "What's wrong?" It was a very good question. What was wrong? Why was I crying? Was it chemistry? The math test? The boyfriend? No, it was none of these things. I was just crying, because I hated myself. I was mad at myself and my heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest. Here I was, immobilized by sobs and hating myself - just like that day in kindergarten. But, because normal people don't just cry for the sake of crying, she was expecting an answer, expecting something like "My parents grounded me," or "I failed my math test." Or maybe something more tragic, "Someone died." But, none of this happened. I never did anything bad, and I have never been grounded in my life. I wasn't the best math student, but I never failed. My boyfriend was great and was the nicest person in the world. Nobody died, I didn't go to my first funeral until I was twenty. There was no reason for this craziness. There was no reason for this debilitating sadness. This heaviness that held me down. I felt like I was floating in water and my body was moving against my will. But, I couldn't tell her that I didn't know why I was crying. Normal people don't burst into tears in the middle of French class. Normal people at least wait until they are alone to cry like this. She was going to think I was crazy. And, not the good kind of crazy, where you make people laugh. That type of needing physical restraints and padded wall crazy. So, I used my story making skills and lied. I lied to make me seem normal. "My parents are fighting." This wasn't completely untrue and I don't know why I said it. It just seemed like the best thing at the time. The words came out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying: "I think they're getting a divorce." My parents used to fight a lot - so the first part wasn't completely untrue - but they weren't divorcing. Not even close. But, the lie seemed like the best answer. That's all it took. A small stretch of the truth and somebody understood this outburst.

I have done this my entire life. Making up these stories to justify the way I felt. I have broken up with numerous boyfriends, caused fights, and told lies - because it didn't make sense the way I felt. My parents, although often fighting, were together. I was doing okay in school. I had a boyfriend. I had a part-time job. Although I wasn't popular, I had a friends. But, I would continually find myself crippled with these depressive episodes. They sometimes lasted a day, sometimes a week, and sometimes a month. But, to justify these episodes - I would lie just so someone could pretend to understand why I was like this. Now I know that these were depressive episodes - but when no one has mentioned depression to you before - you just feel like an emotional freak. Yeah, most teenagers are emotionally led by their hormones, contentious, irritable, and plain old difficult. This was different. I knew it was different. But, I couldn't tell anyone that I was immobilized by sadness and I had no reason to be. Instead, I would make up these stories. Even as a child, I remember crying in my bed. I was about nine years old. My mom would come in and ask me why I was crying and again - the best answer I could give - "I am mad at myself." I could never escape the self-hatred. It always seemed like the best answer and the most truthful.

Origins

I have been trying to figure out when I realized there was something wrong with me, chemically, as they say. I have been flipping through the catalog of my childhood memories and there are a few moments that stick out from the rest, but really one in particular. I have this memory from when I was about five years old and I was in kindergarten. I went to a Catholic elementary school, which was the first of five elementary schools I went to as a child. For various reasons I switched and we moved a lot. High school was the longest I'd ever stayed in one place. That might be why I get stir-crazy when I live someplace for too long. I get restless when I've worn out a place. I'm at this Catholic elementary school and in cliche form, I have a nun as a teacher. But she wasn't one of those horrifyingly terrifying nuns you see in movies rapping the knuckles of children with metre sticks. She didn't pull us by our ears or shove us in closets or make us clap chalk board brushes. Instead, she was the nicest and kindest woman on the face of the planet - a mother Theresa teaching five year-old's. Truly. Or at least, this is how I remember her.

My class was on our weekly trip to the library to get some books to bring home.
I used to love library days or doing anything that related to books. Before I even knew how to read I would look at picture books and pretend that I knew the words to the story. I would make up the story to match the pictures in the books - not really caring that I didn't know the words. It didn't matter. My story was just as good as anybody else's. I remember the librarian telling me once that she could read the story to me and I said: "No thank you, I can read." She laughed at me and shook her head, but I really liked my own stories much more than the ones the words contained. So we're in the library and before we are set off to get our books, we sit on these grey, carpeted steps. It was that industrial type of carpeting that would give you rug burn just by brushing your hand against it. I used to hate it - it used to leave my legs itchy all day. So the Sister reminds us of the rules for the library - primarily being very quiet and use our "inside voices." Telling twenty or so five and six-year old's to be quiet is futile - although I was always silent. I was insufferably shy, to the point that I almost never spoke. I think that's why I liked books so much - I could be quiet and make up my little story in my head allowing me to be comfortably inside my own head. After reminding us to be quiet the Sister sets us out to get books and I don't move. Or, I feel compelled to not move. I can't move. I must have consciously decided it, so I sit on the prickly carpet immobile. I assume I had a moment of reasoning in my head. "Yes, now I should get up and get a book. But, I really don't want to. Why not? I don't know. Should I cry? Why would I cry? Because it seems like the right thing to do. Well, alright then. I won't move and I will cry instead." As I'm going through this in my head, the tears start to well up and I don't really know why. Why do most five-year old's cry? Usually because of nothing. Maybe falling down. But, I hadn't fallen down. I was just sitting there minding my own business when my legs decided they didn't want to move and I felt like crying. Through my tears I see the Sister approach me. She says, "Why aren't you going to get your book?" and I respond, "Because I don't want to. I can't," as the tears stream down my cheeks and land in little puddles on my clenched fists, which somehow showed my determination to not move. The Sister asks me, "Well, why don't you want to get a book? You usually like library time." And, as if it made the most logical sense in the world, I say: "Because I am mad at myself." Just like that. "I am mad at myself." I don't remember anything else from this memory, but this moment in the library explaining that my immobility was due to being angry with myself. There was this precise understanding that there is something wrong with me and I'm not sure what, but it makes me mad at myself. My life continues in this cycle of utter hatred for myself, my life, and everything that is included in this. I hate my body. I hate that I'm socially awkward. I hate that I am a perfectionist. I hate that I talk too much about myself. I hate that I am not a natural at anything. I hate that I have a mental illness. I hate all the medication. I hate that I'm a fuck up - a freak - a failure.

So this memory sticks out for me. Somehow, as a child, I knew that there was something not right. That I had the sensitivity to be aware that I was angry with myself. Mad enough that I couldn't move. Immobile and angry - not wanting to get a book - not wanting to do the thing I loved most in the world. This memory is irrevocably the origin of my mental illness and has stayed with me through all of the treatment and therapy. Questions by psychiatrists and therapists leading back to these same answers to different questions. Questions not about getting a book, but questions about the way I feel. Questions about why I think the way I do. Because, I don't want to, I can't move, and I am mad at myself.

The crazies?

I read a lot of memoirs, but particularly memoirs about living with depression, eating disorders, bipolar disorders in some attempt to comprehend myself. I've made it my specialty in school - in some vain attempt to help myself. But, the more I read, the more I study, the less I identify with. So, I'm using this blog to write about my own experiences - although they say that I am "healthy" now and I'm taking my meds like the good girl that I am - I still feel it every now and then. I haven't written in a long time and I almost never talk about my "disorder," because I hope that the more silence and secrecy that surrounds it, the more I can pretend it deos not exist. However, every now and then the crazies still well up in my chest. I feel the precarious balance of between being a normal, healthy, educated, young lady and muttering on the street, with a shopping cart, claiming I'm a prophet sent from God tipping one way or another. This is my worst fear. I start to feel the scale tipping to one side - making me more or less crazy - depending on the tilt. I have been "healthy" or "stable" for approximately two years, but I feel the weight of the scale is sloping slowly, but steadily towards (as my mother loves to put it) an "episode."
When I feel this slope - it sometimes instigates me to think about cutting - I love cutting (or more appropriately, I used to love cutting). I feel that there is some real release of pain and breaks through the numbness ... but, I promised a few people in my life that I wouldn't do it anymore. I am excessively honest and am the worst liar in the world. So, here I am and I can't cut, because I would be breaking a promise and it's sort of hard to hide the gashes in your arms or legs from someone who sees you naked. That same person who made you promise never to do it again. Yeah, I have had slips - but who doesn't. Doesn't an alcoholic sometimes drink? Or a drug addict go on a binge? Well, I sometimes slip and just make one cut through my skin. Just to see it bleed and make sure that I am real - that I exist. It's a funny thing existing. I can see my hands, my reflection in the mirror, I know other people see me and can hear me, because they talk to me and call my name - but sometimes you just need to make sure that you're still alive. That's the thing that the people I promise to just don't get. I don't cut to die. I actually cut to make sure I'm alive. Cutting does not equal a suicide attempt, not always anyways. I don't want to die - I mean, I did at one point - but not now. It's just a way to test that I am still alive. Or, that I can still feel things and that all of the medication doesn't numb me to the point that I don't feel anymore. This brings me back to existing. If you aren't feeling the way you "normally" feel without medication then am I myself anymore? Do I still exist? I read this article a couple of months back about identity and medication and the author debated, which is the real identity when medicated? The one before or after medication? Or, are we part of the same whole? Am I still me, even though I am medicated with stabilizers, uppers, and anxiety medication? It is truly an identity crisis...
But, this is all really getting ahead of myself ... the reason I am writing this blog - that's where I began. I don't identify with a lot of the books women are writing about their experiences with mental illness. They seem to come from families that are broken or breaking. They come from poverty or other bad situations. They were molested or abused by this or that person. I on the other hand, have nothing like that in my life. My parents have been married for twenty-six years - of course they've fought - but who doesn't. I've come from an upper middle-class family my entire life. I've had opportunities to become educated. This is the thing that I never understood. I mean, I had no reason to suffer from depression (when they called it that first) and I don't really have a reason to suffer from bipolar disorder either ... So, this blog is going to talk about my life, with bipolar disorder, through treatments and suffering and wanting to die ... and hopefully someone will be able to identify with my experience ... the experience that we don't often hear about ... the average individual, with nothing deeply traumatic in their life, suffering from mental illness ...