Writing from the abyss

No one cares about your little problems 

This is what’s running around in my head as I attempt to write this newsletter. The world is a garbage heap. Everything’s going to hell. Every day, the news gets worse.

And me, well, I’m in the most severe depression of my life. 

Why should you care? Why should anyone care? There are far more pressing problems in the world. But maybe you’re where I am, or have been? Maybe this will help someone. Is what I keep telling myself. 

It started only a week ago. My psychiatrist put me on a new medication two weeks ago, one to help with mood stability that wouldn’t turn me into an emotionless husk, and for one week it worked GREAT. I felt human! I had emotions back! I felt joyful! And then it all went downhill. I developed severe akathisia (which is like restless leg syndrome, but all over your body) and dry mouth, and my mood took a decidedly dark turn. I immediately stopped taking the new med. The akathisia continued. The dry mouth kept going. And my mood kept hurtling downhill. By Monday I had crashed and burned. The akathisia made it incredibly uncomfortable to sit still, and somehow I had also developed achiness all over which made moving around unbearable. I could neither be still nor get up and do anything. All I can do is take meds for sleep and hope that I get a few hours of unconsciousness. Meanwhile, the negative thought loop was and is relentless. I’m a failure, I will always be a failure, it’s too late for me, I might as well just give up, everything good has already happened. More than anything the following thought keeps popping up:

This, again?! 

Like, again? Are you serious, brain? I thought we talked about this. We agreed that I would take my lil meds and I would go for walks and do my yoga and you would let me live in relative peace. 

Along with this is a feeling of utter and complete hopelessness; this will keep happening and happening, no matter what I do, and everyone’s as sick of me as I am of feeling this way. Every time a friend doesn’t reply right away to my text: they’re sick of you. I know it’s irrational. I have friends and family who love me and are checking on me every day. (And if you’re a friend who’s just learning about this for the first time through this newsletter, I’m sorry; I couldn’t find the energy to reach out to more than a couple of people.) My mother is sending me “marijuana oil” (pretty sure it’s just CBD, but I’m excited to find out!). My friend Abby suggested I just drink heavily until the side effects wear off, which gave me my first good laugh of the week. My sister told me she could never be sick of me. I’m trying, I’m trying really really hard, to believe her. 

My doctor and my therapist have asked me if I think I need to be hospitalized. I just don’t know. I mean, it seems deeply unpleasant to be hospitalized. Scott wouldn’t be there. Hazel wouldn’t be there. These are the things that I need to live. I guess this is a coded “Are you thinking of harming yourself?” question, and the answer to that is complicated. In one sense, it’s all I think about (sorry, sorry, I know this is frightening to hear), but in the other more important sense, I definitely won’t. It seems like that would take too much energy. More than that, I couldn’t do that to my family. And I don’t want to be dead; I just want to be out of this pain.

In all the hopelessness, I still have a glimmer of feeling that I can get through this. It’s only been a week (I kind of can’t believe it’s only been a week), and I’m going back to my old med (the one that left me without emotions), only at a lower dose. And I was able to write this! I wouldn’t have managed it yesterday, or the day before. I am getting better. 

So: Despite overwhelming feelings of shame, and despair, I’m posting this. I’m posting this because if you’re going through something similar, you’re not alone. We will get through this, somehow. We will.