It started and I kept going along, ignoring yet feeling it. It came on more slowly than before which fooled me into believing it would come and move on its way. Then, things piled up…symptoms piled up: irritability, trouble sleeping, severe anxiety, fatigue, difficulty feeling connected to others, decrease in appetite…I wanted to keep ignoring it and only described my symptoms to my therapist but never used the word “depression.” My therapist did and questioned if I was falling back but I told her I wasn’t, that I wasn’t totally under water and could still be around people. That held true but not for long and then I could no longer ignore it. I could not say the word out loud though. I emailed my therapist and simply said, “I am depressed.” Of course when we saw each other next, the word was voiced and owned by me.
In the past, my depressive episodes would come on very quickly, sometimes within days from 0-100. Feeling the symptoms pile on one another so quickly is terrifying and does not allow you any time to breathe. This episode is different, certainly not better, but different.
This feels as if I walked through a door and realized it was the wrong one to go through but once I turned around the door was gone and I was stuck in the wrong place. I entered the wrong door to the wrong time to the wrong place with no way out. I walked into utter darkness and even though I can’t see anything, this isn’t the only phenomenon that scares me. It’s not just about being alone in the darkness, but feeling alone. I cannot conjure up feelings, thoughts and memories of those I love very often and hold onto them. The frustration of that only leads to more fear of being and believing that feeling alone is my destiny.
This door has led me to the wrong world and I am seeking an exit. This world is vast, empty and scary. Not only is it desolate but it is not allowing me any comfort. It is not allowing my brain to think clearly and to picture my loves, hold on to them and use those images and visualizations in my head to calm me.
This fucking sucks. I’m anxious with no precipitant. I am numb. I am sad. I am scared. I am irritable. I am so very tired. I feel so alone. I feel I am a burden. My inner dialogue is terribly rude and offensive toward myself (and these are only a few examples): I’m stupid, a bad person, a bad wife, a bad mother and this reel goes on and on in my head throughout the day and now feels normal. My body is in the world but I am not. Life is happening around me but I don’t feel I am a participant.
As I work with my therapist on talking through the many aspects of my current experience, I am also working with my psychiatrist on a medication increase. There is no easy fix and it can take 3-4 weeks to begin to feel a positive effect from this increase which is not easy to tolerate when I feel so stuck.
I didn’t mean to walk through this door into this world. I simply didn’t know. The writer, Dejan Stojanovica, wrote, He tries to find the exit from himself but there is no door. I think I walked through that door because I believed it would rid me of my inner pain, that I could “exit” my self but once through that door, it turned out to simply be a mirage. It wasn’t real. There never was a door to walk through in order to leave my self. This world that feels wrong is actually my world. It wasn’t a mistake, I was merely taking the next step that I had to take as it was the only way to go. I, somehow, need to keep walking though, not to find an exit, but to find an entrance.
Risa's Reality 