Depression

The sad passing of Robin Williams this week has sparked many discussions about depression. This is good. More attention needs to be paid to mental illness. I was especially struck by one article that I read that talked about depression being the cause of someone's death, not suicide. It is a very valid viewpoint and one I feel that society should adopt. Here is the link so you can check it out:

http://www.tomclempson.com/2014/08/robin-williams-did-not-die-from-suicide/

Some of the comments that I have seen have made me want to share my own story. I've only ever told this to one other person, and not even all of it. So why not share it with the entire world, right? But it's something that I think people should know because depression can be very hard to understand if you yourself have never suffered from it.

When I was in high school, I definitively believed that depression was something you could just get over. I thought people, my friends, who came to school and said they were depressed were just looking for attention or trying to cause drama. I had bad days too. I got over them. I tried to look for the positive, and I always pulled myself out of my funks. With no other frame of reference, I thought my friends were the same way, so I never took it seriously when someone said they were depressed. Honestly, I didn't really think depression was even a real thing.

In college, things started to change. Nothing in my life went wrong per se, but I began to feel down a lot. There were days when I would skip class just to stay in my room and sleep. I felt like I was slowly sinking into deep mud and there was no way to pull myself out. This went on for several years.

The day after my 22 birthday I woke up and wanted to die. There was nothing wrong in my life, everything was going great with family, college, and friends. Classes hadn't even really started yet (my birthday is early in September), so I wasn't under any pressure. And yet I woke up and felt such an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and panic from the hopelessness that I immediately crawled down from my loft and began digging through my medicine drawer to see what I had on hand.

Luckily, I didn't have much, and my roommate was waking up. I set aside some melatonin supplements and ibuprofen and faked being cheerful as I chatted with my roommate and pretended to get ready to go to class. I had no intention of going, though.

As soon as my roommate left, I turned back to the pills. Knowing that supplements wouldn't be enough, I got online and began to research methods for killing myself. There is a lot of detail that can be found on the Internet, and I thank God for the suicide prevention forums that went into graphic and explicit detail about how horrible a death by pills is, especially if you don't have enough pills to guarantee that you will die. I definitely did not have enough pills, and I didn't want to go through so much horror, so I began looking up other ways.

This whole time, the day was going by. The sun was out. I saw friends in the hallway when I left my computer to go to the bathroom. Everything should have been fine, but my brain kept insisting that something was terribly, horribly wrong, and the only way to fix it was for me to die. I felt like there was no other choice.

Finally I came across a method that seemed like it would work well. I planned to go to the hardware store and pick up what I would need the next day. Settling on a method weirdly made my brain relax a little bit. A decision had been made. This was going to happen.

This moment was the first time, in the entire day, when I felt that something was wrong. I don't know if it was because I had made a plan and my brain could relax because it thought things would be over the next day or what, but suddenly I was able to think that this was not normal for me. I still had an overwhelming urge to end my life. But I also knew that something was wrong. I immediately called the school psychologist. I was put on anti-depressants and began twice weekly counseling sessions. Nothing ever really came out in the counseling sessions, though, and that is my point.

I have never felt that way since, and I hope I never do again. I am constantly paying attention to my mood, but I know that that may not be enough. For me, it came out of the blue. There was no reason for it, no cause. Something went wrong in my brain, and that was it.

This is what people need to understand. Depression is not something that a person can control, any more than they can control cancer, or diabetes, or heart disease. Depression is an illness that someone gets.

Looking back, the scariest thing for me is that I had no control. No other thoughts. There was nothing I could do to stop it. It came so suddenly, and I was completely convinced that there were no other options. Looking back, I can see that there were options. But when it was happening, no. I had no control over my brain, and that is absolutely terrifying.