Posted 4/13/2008 7:31 AM (GMT 0)
Hi, everyone. I'm new here and I decided to join HealingWell because my depression is beginning to surface again and I need an outlet, and a place to get some feedback.
I'd like to start out with a brief history of myself, just so you know where I'm coming from (it's so hard to help someone when you know nothing about them).
I'm 19, 20 in less than 2 months.
My depression started, I guess, when I was about 6. My mother started me in therapy in the second grade. My parents and councilors always told me I was depressed. I didn't really understand, though, as I couldn't remember not being depressed. They shoved me on all kinds of medications without explaining to me any more than 'take x amount of y pill z times a day'. The medication, for the most part, just made me feel entirely emotionless. One didn't do anything for me, and another just made me feel worse about myself. By the time I was in Jr. High I had grown to deeply resent the therapy system. I started refusing medication and then I refused to go to therapy at all.
I had my first suicide attempt in the sixth grade, and I was planning another in the ninth grade but my parents intervened before I was able to hurt myself.
Whether because of a teenage hormone shift or because I was finally put into a loving, supportive school environment where I could thrive and make friends, my depression faded in 10th grade and had mostly stayed under the surface until very recently. I was finally able to understand life without depression, which only makes it that much worse now that I'm facing it again.
Life since my depression faded has been amazing. My grades were almost perfect and my motivation to do well in life was sky high. I made friends, had a couple of boyfriends, and married my best friend of 5 years last July.
In September I became pregnant and began to have anxiety problems. By November I miscarried and I hardly ever left my house. I started to lose touch with my friends. My anxiety problems have been getting steadily worse (though I am in therapy) since then. Somehow, despite essentially giving up on many of my life dreams because of the trapped feeling my anxiety gives me, I managed to be relatively okay with myself and my situation. I haven't ever had great self-esteem, but I've been generally alright with myself as of the last few years. The depression hadn't re-surfaced until sometime this week, and it's hit like a train.
I suddenly feel worthless, like I will never amount to anything. I feel like I really don't want to live anymore - like there's very little left to bother with. I feel like I will never get better. I feel like I'm nothing but a drain on my husband. I feel ugly and stupid and guilty for everything. I feel hated by all of my friends, all those I hardly know, and most of all by myself. I also feel sort of dull... like the world doesn't really matter - it hardly exists. I feel like, were it not for my husband (which I would do absolutely anything for), I would probably just go ahead and move on. I don't want to call it giving up, because I don't really feel like it would be giving up - there isn't a lot to be given up. 'Move on' fits the way I feel the best, because I feel like it would be just... moving past this whole life, which is essentially nothing to me right now - and going to whatever might be next no matter how good or bad or full of nothing it might be.
Talking like this scares me. It really worries me that I've reached this point again, and that it came on with zero warning. I want to talk to my therapist about it, but she's completely booked until my appointment on the 22nd. I want to see a psychiatrist about getting onto medication again (now that I'm old enough to manage it myself and make my own decisions) but I know that wont happen for at least another week. And I feel that I have no outlet and no way to alleviate my pain and stress until then.
I was so young when I was in therapy for depression before that I remember nothing about how to deal with it. I don't remember how I got by, or how I managed to feel like this day after day. My husband is very supportive, but also pretty clueless. Any help on how to deal, function, or even feel better would be so helpful to me right now.
I know this was really long. Even if you don't have any wisdom to dispense, I want to say thanks for reading through it all, for giving me the time of day.