It Doesn’t Happen Overnight

Depression is not a sudden attack like a migraine, but rather a gradual disease that gets worse over time. If I really think back, my depression started my junior year of high school. I coped by focusing on my weight. The thinner I was, the stronger I felt.

When I was nineteen, I had my first child and married my husband two months later. I never again felt beautiful because I could never lose all of my pregnancy weight. With the stress from my weight, planning a wedding and taking care of a newborn, not to mention my hormones, my emotions were raging out of control. I was diagnosed with postpartum depression and treated with Prozac.

Over the next few years our marriage was loving but we fought a lot. We were both very young and immature. We didn’t always make the best decisions and it caused a lot of stress on both of us. I continued to try different antidepressants until getting pregnant with our son two years after our daughter.

Our son was born with a soft cleft palate and could not eat like other babies. We had to use special bottles because he could not form a suction on the nipple. He did not sleep and suffered from chronic ear infections and acid reflux. He had to have major surgery at nine months to repair the hole in his palate. All of this was very hard to deal with and I once again started an antidepressant.

My husband and I separated on several occasions for many reasons. The constant arguing and my depression definitely played a huge role however his opiate addiction following surgery was the biggest contributing factor. He overcame his addiction after a long, hard road and he has been clean for seven years. He was the pilar of strength in beating his dependency the final time and while it was all I prayed for, once he was better I no longer had his addiction to use as the reason I was depressed. He was better and I wasn’t.

Then came the straw that seemed to break the camel’s back. I made the difficult decision to leave a very rewarding job because I felt it was morally the right thing to do. I loved my job and the people I worked with however I was burned out due to poor personal and business choices being made by my boss. I honestly didn’t expect to actually quit, I had thought he would realize I was only doing what I thought was best for him and his business and make the necessary changes, but he never did. Instead I dealt with months of retaliation which made me question if I ever actually knew him.

Shortly after leaving that job, I started to feel like I was always on the verge of getting the flu. I had aching joints, fatigue, swollen lymph nodes and general malaise. My depression was also getting worse. I saw a new doctor which eventually led to the diagnosis of Mixed Connective Tissue Disorder and Fibromyalgia. I was also given Effexor XR for my depressive state.

My physical pain and fatigue continued to get worse and new symptoms arose. I had rashes, liver problems and headaches. My depression started to feel as though it were burying me alive. I had a constant sense of hopelessness and fear of the future. I couldn’t concentrate and was forgetting simple things.

After seven nights of not sleeping, I found myself desperate to stop the pain. I was beyond exhausted. I was overwhelmed with guilt, helplessness and hopelessness. I felt like every decision I made was wrong. I didn’t feel valuable enough to be loved by my husband and had convinced myself that he couldn’t love me. I feared the future. I felt like I couldn’t breathe so I opened the bottle of Ativan and took a handful of pills.

All I wanted was to sleep and for the pain to stop. I didn’t want to cry anymore. I didn’t want to die but I didn’t want to live either. I loved my family so much that I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving them yet I also felt like I was a huge disappointment and they would all be fine without me. I just prayed that the hurt would go away and then I fell asleep.

The next thing I remember is walking through the doors of the psychiatric hospital with my parents. I was scared but I had a sense of calmness rush over my body. I knew that this is where I needed to be. I knew that my prayers were being answered and that this would help me. I knew I was saved and that I was meant to be here for my family and that somehow, someday things would get better.

Depression is very gradual, it took fourteen years for my depression to reach the point where I could no longer ignore it. My environment and stress played a role as well as my brain chemistry and predisposition. Regardless of the how or the why, it didn’t happen overnight.