Depression.
I know I've written about this once, maybe twice before but after a meltdown the other night I realized how clueless people who don't experience these feelings and reactions are when it comes to depression. I don't use "clueless" in a negative way, but just stating a fact.
Let's start at the beginning of my story. I didn't know I was "depressed" at the time. I thought it was a phase, just weird thoughts running through my head, temporary lapses in judgement. But looking back, some of what I did wasn't "normal". It started in high school, about 13 years ago. Overall I was a happy person but then the time came that I heard my parents arguing in the other room, so I left the house for a while to see if anyone would notice. They didn't. I felt "down" one day after a bowling match, we'd gotten back around 7pm. I didn't want to be with anyone and didn't want to call anyone to pick me up so I made the 2.2mile walk in the dark and cold home. This time someone noticed. I know I had the thought, "I want to die." more than I could count. But once I took a little step closer to making that wish a reality. I remember holding a bottle of pills. Wondering, how many it would take. One night I sat on my windowsill, feet outside thinking, if I fall, I don't want to die, I just want to be really injured badly. I can still remember those feelings now. I remember telling my muscles just to push myself off.
I never did these things though. Somewhere in the back of my mind I still had the sense to tell myself not to do it. I heard myself saying how stupid and silly it was. That I had nothing to be depressed about. I had a good life, so much better than a majority of the people in the entire world. So why did I feel like this?
Along with the periods of feeling worthless, I would have periods of rage. I would slam doors. As I got older I wanted (I shouldn't be using the past tense here) to hurt things, hurt myself. It's like, if I hurt these things, I won't hurt anything, or anyone, else. But even so, it's not a conscious thought. When I get into these states, there are two parts of me. There is the part that is still conscious, still there literally saying to myself, "Don't do this. It's childish and ridiculous. Don't do it.". But then there is the other side of me. The primal, chemically driven side that simply says, "Fuck you." But it doesn't use words, it displays those emotions by carrying through with the actions.
I kicked a hole in our wall two days ago. That's one of the more damaging things I've done. I lost it. There wasn't any one thing that caused it. It was that everything, starting at 3am the prior morning when my son woke up, that day went wrong, so wrong. By the end of the day, I was exhausted from lack of sleep, exhausted from my workout, stressed from work, came home to a poopy diaper which should have already been changed, among a plethora of other things. By the time I was cleaning the diaper and got poop on my hand and some water splashed out, I lost it. I kicked the wall.
My husband didn't know this at first but I wanted to tell him before he saw for himself. So I told him, he didn't respond. He was mad at me. The Bage doesn't get mad at me often so it's a big deal for me.
So the cycle began. I started crying about why I was so upset and tired and that I'm sorry and I didn't mean it, etc, etc. But it's happened more than once. He once again told me, as he has various other times over the last 5.5 years that he just didn't understand. He said, "I get upset and angry at things but I deal with it.". So the cycle begins of me trying to explain to him what is going on it my head, why I do what I do.
I don't know that this will turn light bulbs on over peoples' heads but maybe generate a little current so there is a little more awareness and understanding. If anything else, maybe other people that deal with this on a day to day basis won't feel as alone in their thoughts and feelings as I have these past 13 years.
I have to go for now but I will definitely write more.
Pace,
Megan
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