Fighting Depression For The First Time: A Personal Story
Disclaimer: I am not a licensed medical doctor or counselor. All of my posts are from my own personal experiences in the areas of my own health and wellness. My posts are meant to inspire you in your health journey, but do not qualify for professional medical advice or diagnosis. Please consult a licensed medical professional or counselor. I cannot be personally held responsible for any advice you take from my blog postings and implement into your life without consulting a medical professional first.
Hello my loyal readers! I hope this blog post finds you happy, healthy, and well. Can you believe we are already halfway through May. It is always one of the quickest months of the year to me, as well as August. Maybe it is because my work days are 100 miles per hour so the weeks pass quickly.
As you all know, both Mental Health and Celiac Disease Awareness are highly important to me. This May was the first time I wanted to do my part to raise awareness for both, since I do cope and manage both on a daily basis.
I have been diagnosed with Celiac Disease for almost a decade, and have maintained my gluten free diet strictly during this decade. Two years ago this July, I started seeing a mental health counselor. This was long overdue in learning how to cope and manage my daily struggles when it comes to my mental health. You can read about my experience of why I started going in Part 1 and Part 2 of my year in counseling posts.
When my counselor evaluated my mental health symptoms around a year ago she diagnosed me with “unspecified depression.” When going through criteria for the different types of depression I didn’t meet everything for major depression disorder or chronic depression, which both run in my family.
In this post I wanted to share my deeply personal story with battling depression for the first time. I will say that what is to follow may trigger some of you who maybe have had a history as well. Please consider you personal and mental health space before you continue reading this post.
My first fight with Depression
For as long as I can remember I have felt “off.” Like I am disconnected from everyone around me, even if I am in the same room and engaging in a conversation with them. Sometimes I am overly emotional and it takes the smallest thing to make me cry. Other times I feel nothing at all, and like I am going through the motions of daily life that feel like I am dragging my feet through mud.
Shortly after I turned sixteen years old I started going through my first major depression. Looking back there wasn’t one specific thing that set me off. It came on slowly and suddenly all at the same time. I spent most of that year of life in the worst mental state imaginable. Every activity I once enjoyed I could care less about. I hardly talked with my friends and isolated myself completely off from everyone. I hated school and talked with my parents about dropping out.
When I realized I wouldn’t have a good life if I dropped out of high school I contemplated suicide, and I started thinking about the how and the where.
“I remember laying in front of my dads closet on the floor one day as I began to write a note to my parents. Saying how sorry I was but that I couldn’t take the pain anymore. That I didn’t want to live anymore.”
When I think back to that moment in my life, and what saved me, it was a combination of things. Being raised in church my whole life I always have believed in something bigger than myself, and I started thinking about all the times my life could have been taken but wasn’t.
One time was when I was getting off the school bus in elementary school and my sister yanked me back since a car was deciding to not stop for us to cross the road. Another time was before my sixth grade year when my family was in a horrible accident with an eighteen wheeler, and by a miracle we all walked away with not even a scratch besides the car being totaled.
That day I prayed. I sobbed. I begged for the strength to continue on life’s journey and where it decided to take me. I thought about my parents and friends, and how heartbroken they would be if something happened to me.
“It was a fight, but I tore up my letter and decided to live another day.”
It took me nearly six years to share the story of this day with my parents. Today I chose to share it with all of you.
I shared this story because I want my readers who battle depression to know that I have truly been there in the darkest place you can ever be, and I have came out on the other side. I am happily engaged to the love of my life, have a job I enjoy and am passionate about, have great friends near and far who are like family, and have my hobbies like this blog of mine.
I will also say that it wasn’t the last time I ever faced suicidal thoughts in my journey battling depression, but I understood more about what I was experiencing the second time around and that there was help for it.
Depression has no limits on who it can impact in this life.
So many people like myself are master manipulators at hiding it from others and avoid acknowledging it within ourselves. We feel shame when we acknowledge that we battle mental illness and are struggling.
The biggest thing I have learned through going to therapy these past two years is that my depression is a part of me but doesn’t have to define who I am completely.
Battling depression doesn’t make me weak, it makes me strong. Being sad and emotional doesn’t mean I am soft, but helps me be more empathetic towards others.
If you are battling this, or any other mental illness my friend, know that you are not alone and there is help out there.
THE CURRENT AND FUTURE YOU ARE WORTH LIVING AND FIGHTING FOR!
Your friend,
