Last Friday I went to a new doctor who prescribed Zyprexa for my depression.  2.5mg plus 40mg of prozac. 
Saturday I was ornery and irritable.  I was afraid that the new drug might have been causing it, because I have been irritable on other drugs.  Since then, my mood has been getting increasingly better.  Today, I actually cleaned my kitchen.  You can see my kitchen counters for the first time since November.  I then started a project of painting a picture frame to match my living room, put pictures in it, and cleaned up the mess from my project.  A week ago I would have just looked at the frame and thought it would be nice to paint it and then walk by without any intention of doing so.  How thankful I am that I am feeling better.  I never would have imagined a week ago that I would even start such a project, let a lone finish it.  Odd how depression sucks the life out of a person.  It makes you not even imagine that you can do such things let alone actually do them.
I never thought I would be grateful for anti-depressants, but after this last brutal winter and depressive episode, I can only think that I must be grateful... or I might have been dead.

What is it really?

WHAT NON-DEPRESSED PEOPLE THINK ABOUT DEPRESSION:

• Depressed people are sad all the time.
• Depressed people are too sad to get out of bed.
• You'd feel better if you exercised.
• If you'd clean your house, you'd feel better.
• You just need to focus on the good things in your life.
• Depressed people just need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

WHAT DEPRESSION REALLY IS:

• Depressed people are not always sad.
• Your mood is not the only thing that is depressed.
• Your body heals more slowly than normal.
• your concentration is diminished.
• You don't stay in bed because you're too sad to face life, you stay in bed because your body is so tired you can't imagine doing anything else.
• Sometimes depressed people do have energy, but sometimes that energy only lasts a few minutes.  Sometimes I wake up ready to face the day, and by the time I have gone to the bathroom and walked back to my bedroom, I'm too tired to do anything else but lay back down in bed.
• depression sucks the energy and the life out of you.
• Depressed people would love to get outside and exercise if only they still had energy left after they've gotten dressed and put their shoes on.
• Pleasure doesn't last when you are depressed.  You can do something that brings joy to your life, but once you stop, the pleasure is gone.  Normal people do things they enjoy and it makes their life fulfilling.  Depressed people do things they enjoy and the moment the pleasurable activity is over, so is the joy.
• Things that you can normally handle, will send you over the edge when you are depressed.
• Niceties are lost along the way.  Even when you are normally kind, when you are depressed, you find yourself saying things, or not saying thing, the way you normally would.  I forget the little stuff like "please" and "thank you" and "good job" when I'm depressed.
• Depression is physically painful.  I'm not sure if it causes pain or if pain is just more noticeable and less tolerable when your depressed, but there physical pain.
• Depression makes you feel empty.

My Two Battles

I have two main battles in my life right now.  The first one has been a losing battle since I was 12.  What is it? In a word - WEIGHT.  As of the writing of this post, my body weighs 341 pounds.  Wow.  I really don't like that number when its written down.  My body weighs 200 pounds more than it should.  No wonder everything always hurts.

The second battle that is raging in my downward spiraling life is DEPRESSION.  I can barely handle the things that come my way in my every day life.  Right now, my house is so dirty that I am only enduring the aweful smell coming from my kitchen because I don't have the energy or desire to get up and take out the trash.  This afternoon I opened my fridge and it smelled so bad that I almost gagged.  I took out everything I could see that I thought might be smelling it up, so now whatever that was is sitting in my kitchen garbage, wafting into my nostrils in the living room.  Perhaps I'll post a picture of the current state of my kitchen just to show how badly I am really feeling.  If there is one room in my house that I hate having messy, it's my kitchen, so it is a telling sign of my mental state when all the dishes I own are spilling over the sink onto the counters.

Today I went to an appointment with a new doctor whom I have been waiting for over a month to see, only to find out that she called in sick today and I can't get another appointment until the middle of April.  I walked out of the office in tears, and by the time I was a block down the street, I was crying almost hysterically.  I came home, laid on my bed, and sobbed.  This week has been super hard not only because of the depression but also because my back has been hurting.  I don't know how much more I can take.  It's hard enough being depressed when I don't have any physical ailments.

There have been a couple times this week when I was SO tired that I actually felt sick to my stomach.  Depression rears it's head in many different ways, but fatigue is a big one for me.  Of course, my body also carries an extra 200 pounds with it everywhere it goes, so who's to say that my fatigue doesn't have something to do with that too.

Unfortunately, I think my two biggest battles feed off of each other.  It's usually more difficult to control what I eat when I am not feeling happy, and it's equally difficult to be happy when my body weight keeps going up.  Depression sucks!  I think often of death and dying.  I wish that I could just stop the pain.  Stop the misery.  I live a block away from the train tracks and that is always in the back of my mind as my final way out.  I would rather just go to sleep and never wake up.  I've learned over the years that it takes a lot of guts to actually knock ones self off.  I've heard it said that suicide is the cowards way out, but anyone who has ever toyed with the idea knows that it is a very scary alternative to living out your life.  I've been in high rise buildings contemplating the possibility of jumping, and I can say that it is a very scary thought.  I think often of walking down the block and jumping in front of that train.  What if it doesn't kill me?  What if I am merely crippled for life?  Would my weight buffer the impact enough to render me incapacitated but not dead?  I've never really thought of offing myself with a gun because I wouldn't have the slightest clue how to go about getting one.  ...No, suicide is a scary thing.  There doesn't seem to be an easy way to do it.  You hear stories of people who take pills and never wake up, but you also hear stories of people who take pills, wake up, and spend the remainder of their lives as vegetables.  Not for me, thank you.  If I ever do decide to do it, I will do it "right."  End it.  Get it over with.  Finito!

The Dregs of Depression. Take 1.

I have been thinking of starting a blog for quite sometime, not sure if I wanted my most personal thoughts and feelings to be out there for the whole world to see, but, alas, I want a place where I can go to record all of my feelings, thoughts, and rantings.  I am starting with a private blog only for myself.  If I ever decide to open it up to the world, fine.  If not, it will just be a place for me to come and vent my innermost ideas.