Welcome to the Dark Side

Welcome to my dark side. We all have one. You can lie to yourself and everyone you know and say that you don't but you do. I know I do.

My dark side is simple enough though. Those closest to me already know all about it. It may come as a surprise to everyone else though, that I have lived with/suffered with chronic depression pretty much my entire life. As it turns out, its a genetic trait passed down on my mother's side of the family. My mother quietly battled depression. Her twin sister did the same. Their mother eventually committed suicide due to hers. My first suicidal impulses started at age four. They've continued for 39 years. Sometimes they're frequent, sometimes not so frequent. The most important thing I learned about them is that they are impulses, nothing more. They're like a nagging itch in my brain. If I ignore it, it gets worse. I had to find my own way to "scratch that itch" though. I learned to talk myself through it. I remind myself that its an impulse...most likely caused by some chemical misfire in my brain. After a while it goes away again.

Strangely enough, that's not the worst part of my depression. The worst is what I call "the dark moods". When they come on, they can last anywhere from minutes to months. I've learned to live through them, again reminding myself that its probably a chemical misfire.
Allow me to clarify something: being depressed and feeling a little down is one thing. It happens to everybody. Having chronic depression is, and I fully admit this, a disease. Unfortunately, a disease with mostly useless treatments and no cure. There are days when it quite literally takes every bit of strength I have just to get out of bed. Factor in my chronic obstructive sleep apnea, and you get some idea of what waking up is like for me! It makes sleeping hell. Once I'm up and moving, I'm usually OK. I force myself to think positively and to use some cognitive therapy tools I've learned over the years. I force myself to face reality in ways that are a little scary. I have to be brutally honest with myself about my feelings about everyone and everything. Fun way to start the day eh? Luckily, this isn't an everyday occurrence. I usually only have to go through this during the "dark moods".

People, like myself, with depression can and do function. Maybe not to our fullest capacities but we do. We're able to laugh and joke as well. Our laughs might not be as hearty but they're there...and for me, those moments keep my life from being a living hell. (that, dear friends, is why I make jokes about everything...regardless of how inappropriate it may seem) We're able to carry on relationships too...but those often suffer from the side effects of depression. Denial plays a major part in this. The most important thing for a person with depression to do is to find someone they can communicate with. We (the depressed) often lie to ourselves, and worse, those in our lives, about our condition. We say things like "No, I'm okay" or "I'm just a little blue today" when often we're thinking "I just want it all to end".

Depression is a thief. It robs it's victims of the joys that most people take for granted. It sometimes robs us of the few joys we actually do have. My love of music is often the victim of my depression. There are periods when I've gone months without even touching a guitar because the joy has been (at least temporarily) taken away. Those moments hurt. Deeply. Depression also robs it's victims of intimacy. My heart breaks for my girlfriend (and the significant others of anyone with depression). There are times when I'm just too deep in depression to be able to accept her attempts to comfort me. It's like being in a hole with someone reaching down to you and you're just not able to reach their hand.

You may be asking "Why aren't you in therapy?" or "Why aren't you taking antidepressants?". The answers are simple. I spent enough time in therapy to learn the skills I need to cope. It doesn't cure the disease but if one is able to maintain the use of these skills, one can survive. Antidepressants scare the hell out of me. The side effects are often as bad if not worse than the disease. The last time I was on them, I developed tremors in my right arm, which my doctor informed me was my body getting ready to go into seizures. He had me stop taking them immediately. Sadly, those six weeks that I was on it was the best I have ever slept.
So why am I writing all this? Because I am and will continue to live my life, regardless of this disease. I care deeply about those in my life and I feel the need for them to understand. I feel for those like me who live with this. If just one person reads this who has never had someone to turn to and has wondered what's wrong with them reads this and comes away realizing that they're not alone, then I write this for them as well.

I'm also writing this because I woke up Monday in one of my darkest moods. No warning. The beast was just there. It was all I could do to beat the beast back down...but I did. Within a few hours I felt OK again. Not great but OK. And I can live with that. I now look forward to the day when I feel great again! I know its coming. If I've learned nothing else from a lifetime with depression; I've learned that sometimes we all have to wait. And the reward is good. REAL good!

Take care my friends! I'm not going anywhere. I'm not hurting myself. I have no plans to. Life, I realize, is far too special to permanently solve a temporary problem.