Living Way Too Out Loud? Depression and Blogging

I have strug­gled with depres­sion through­out my adult life. Had any­one been pay­ing atten­tion, I would have been diag­nosed with it as a child, after I was molest­ed. But nobody was pay­ing that much atten­tion, so I did­n’t get treat­ment until I was out on my own after my first divorce.

I hate it. I don’t see it as some­thing to be ashamed of, any more than I would be ashamed of hav­ing a bro­ken leg or being diabetic—but I hate it.

Know­ing that I need a damned pill to keep me on a fair­ly even keel, and will prob­a­bly need to keep tak­ing some­thing for the rest of my life, is depress­ing in and of itself.

On the oth­er hand, I’m very glad that depres­sion is treat­able, and that I have access to those treat­ments. I’m glad that my sui­cide attempt end­ed in a hos­pi­tal, rather than a grave. I’m glad that when I felt that bad again, I was able to check myself into anoth­er hos­pi­tal. I’m glad that I have part­ners and friends with whom I can be hon­est, who are very sup­port­ive of me as I fight the demon that lives inside me.

The strug­gle has been worse over the past six months or so. I tried a new drug, one that had the poten­tial for reduc­ing pain as well as man­ag­ing depres­sion. It did­n’t do either well for me, so I’m back to Effex­or (ick). (Now I know that I might not have been on an ade­quate dosage of Cym­bal­ta, so I’ll be check­ing into that next week.) Going on and off SSRIs and SSNRIs is nasty. I did­n’t have ade­quate pro­fes­sion­al care, either. (I will be see­ing a bet­ter doc­tor on Monday.)

As much as the depres­sion eats at me, I can’t even imag­ine hav­ing my part­ners find out just how depressed I might be by read­ing a blog entry. That’s what hap­pened to Ayelet Wald­man’s hus­band. (I can’t begin to deal with the lat­er part, about her 7‑year-old son telling her he was afraid she’d kill herself.)

Still, there but for the grace of $deity: she was alone at home with four kids (ages 7 and down) while her hus­band was away from home on an extend­ed busi­ness trip. That sounds fair­ly hell­ish, right there. (Note to self: should any­thing remote­ly like that be pos­si­ble after we have babies, WE WILL HIRE HELP FOR THAT TIME.)

For­tu­nate­ly for you, I don’t write as much when I’m not feel­ing well. I’m usu­al­ly par­tic­u­lar­ly closed-mouthed about depres­sion and anx­i­ety. They don’t real­ly lead to easy prose, for me at least. But then I don’t expe­ri­ence mania/hypomania as bipo­lar folks like Wald­man do.

I have no idea where I’m going with this. Nowhere, real­ly, I sup­pose. Jour­nal­ing. There ya go.