My Depression Journey

Well, it's the Christmas season. I can't say that I am feeling particularly full of the Christmas spirit. I am doing my best to survive this week. I think that my medications are starting to balance out a bit. I have been feeling a bit more level lately, but today (Christmas eve) it seems to be more difficult. hopefully tomorrow will be better. I have a lot of negative thoughts crowding in on my brain. I am constantly fighting. As a result when someone says anything to me I am reading more into it that there is and getting upset about it even thought there is nothing to be getting upset about. I have to keep reminding myself that nobody is trying to cut me down, and to just let it go. Here is a thought that I am supposed to hold onto. I have a good job. This job is a distraction from Walter. Yes, I named my depression Walter to help remind me that it's not who I am. That is is separate from me. So, I am distracted from Walter much of the time that I am at work. This gi...

It's a vicious cycle. I get depressed and get less motivated to look after myself. I stop taking my pills because I can't be bothered. I need the pills to help get me evened out so I can handle every day.  So it is becoming obvious that I cannot afford to have depression. Depression causes me to make a lazy choices like not wanting to go to work and eating out every day so I don't have to cook, and I just don't make enough money for that and I don't want to lose the income that I do have. I suppose I'm just gonna have to push it all down as best I can and hope I don't have a nervous break down. I've been ignoring my feelings for a few days now. Any time even a hint of negative thoughts enters my mind I push it down hard. It's like sitting on the lid of a big box, pushing that lid down really hard, but the tentacles come out through the cracks in the lid and they are groping for me. I have been taking my pills like ...

All my life I have felt like I'm really strong and I can tackle anything that comes at me. Why am I not able to tackle this? I feel helpless and unprepared for this burden. I'll be sitting on the couch watching some TV and relaxing, not feeling too bad at all. Then out of the blue I feel a curtain come down, making everything dim and hazy. The voices start talking, telling me that I'm not really worth anything. That I am a fraud. They aren't voices so much as impressions and images, showing me suggestions of how I can solve these problems like stepping out into traffic or pushing a knife into my heart. I imagine the pain that it would cause me physically, and the impression says that the pain would only last for a little while and then it would all be over. I love my family. I can't imagine ever not loving in them, but at times like these I don't love my life very much. I know that when the curtain is up there are times when I do love my life. Sometimes it...

Like so many others, I suffer from depression. I am trying to learn how to accept that I have this mental illness and that it is not going to just be gone tomorrow when I wake up. This is where it started. I was a very tall youth, but very shy as well. This prompted a lot of bullying while I was in school. I had great parents and was pretty well adjusted, but the bullying did bother me. I was always afraid to fight back. Yes I did not like confrontation (and I still don't), but the main thing was that I really did not want to hurt anyone. I was most afraid of letting my anger get out of control. This all started early on in elementary school. By the time I got to grade 12 (my graduation year) I almost dropped out because I was just so tired of it all. I managed to stick it out and thankfully I made it through the rest of high school without any further trouble. I wish I could say the same for some of my other class mates. College was not too bad. I had mostly gotten my shyness u...