Sticking around for the fight

There are many nights when my heart is heavier than the body it sleeps in. There are nights when sleep is stolen and days that are stolen by sleep. There are times in the quiet moments when loneliness seems louder than love; when the darkness swallows the light. I am familiar with the darkness, and it is easy to get buried in the weight of it. It is easy to feel abandoned by hope, but I have carried my heart through the storm before and have always managed to find an ember of hope somewhere. Even a dim light is visible in the darkness.

Depression began to creep into my life in my early teenage years. Around 15 years old I started experiencing persistent low moods that seemed to get lower every month. An unwanted voice of negative thoughts began to speak up, my own mind constantly criticizing me and putting me down. As my mood lowered, the voice got louder until it was a constant, unavoidable scream; a terrible record stuck on repeat. I had always been introverted and shy, but as my inner critic started to convince me that other people thought terrible things about me I began to develop social anxiety. My anxiety bullied me into avoiding certain social situations, and I felt constantly ill with its butterflies dancing in my stomach all day. I started having panic attacks; breathing with lungs of lead. I was unable to sleep. I was incredibly irritable and on edge so I isolated myself, which strained my relationships.

I moved from passively to actively planning my suicide.

The people around me knew something was wrong and I sought help. While I sat on waiting lists for psychiatric care, my condition continued to worsen. The negative monster took over my mind, and I started to feel like I didn’t care whether I lived or died. I became reckless (crossing streets without looking for cars, for example), deciding to leave my life up to “fate.” I thought if I was meant to live, I would, and if I was meant to die, so be it. I couldn’t continue living the way I was. My mind was a terrifying hell that I could not escape and I couldn’t take it any longer. I moved from passively to actively planning my suicide.

I had a plan and the means to carry it out, but before I did I stumbled across the book It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini. In the book, the main character calls a suicide hotline and goes to his local emergency room to get the psychiatric help he needs. The book provided light in the darkness. I decided to try the same thing. I couldn’t suffer on waiting lists any longer, I needed help NOW. If I was willing to do anything to die, I might as well try anything to live first. If it didn’t work, I could always kill myself later.

I reported to my local emergency room and was voluntarily admitted to the youth ward of a psychiatric hospital. I was seventeen and had been suffering for over two years. I felt a weight lifted while at the hospital, like things could start getting better. I finally got the help I needed.

Things aren’t perfect, but each experience makes me better prepared for battle.

I spent a month as an inpatient before transferring to the outpatient program. I continued a regime of medication and talk therapy that helped the fog lift over time. I worked hard to develop the coping skills I need to manage my illness. It has been seven years since my hospitalization, and I have had some truly incredible experiences in that time that have made me so grateful that I chose to live to experience them. I have also dealt with bouts of persistent low moods, and two more major depressive episodes (all of which took place during times I had stopped taking my medication.) Things aren’t perfect, but each experience makes me better prepared for battle. Thankfully I am better equipped to cope with my illness now. I ask for help when I need it, and have returned to medications and talk therapy during my depressive episodes. I have accepted that I need to take my medication even when I do feel better; because past experience taught me the medication is playing an essential role in my stability.

It has been nine years since I first started suffering from depression, and I don’t know if it will ever leave my life completely. What I do know is I am grateful that I chose to stick around for the fight. I know that light can penetrate the darkness, because I’ve walked through it. I now work in the mental health field in an attempt to shed light in the dark places other people are stuck in, as others did for me. A fictional story helped save my life, but my story is real, and so is yours. Our stories shed light in the darkness. Through the struggle comes strength. We are sick, not weak.