Amy BoughnerTwo days ago I was feeling pretty good, and then yesterday I started to doubt my reasoning. I had a good morning – got some work done, got my exercise in, ate well. And then in the afternoon I decided to take a nap and I woke up less well.
Something moved that little switch in my brain from ‘we’re doing okay’ to ‘you’re fooling yourself.’ Again.
I have been struggling with depression since I was a teenager. I usually pinpoint it as 16 – when I thought about dropping out of high school, perhaps at least partially because I thought it was a lot of wasted time if I wasn’t going to live that long. I have been on medication off and on since 17.
Recently a man on Facebook told a friend that he’s “not sure” if he believes that depression is a disease. You see, why would I need medication when meditation works for him when he’s “down.”
Here it is: I have always assumed that I am forgettable, or unlikeable. I have always ‘known’ that no one would care or maybe even notice if I disappeared. I have always felt unworthy of what I’ve been given.
The last time I was completely off my medication I slept all day and could often be found in the corner crying in the fetal position. I didn’t have strength or energy to try to live.
It is a very strange feeling knowing that you desperately need help but not wanting to ask for it, lest someone help you.
When my daughter was brand new, I knew that I loved her more than I had ever experienced, and I wondered – often – whether she would be better off without me. I wondered if, despite how much I loved her, she would grow up like me, questioning her worth, questioning her very existence.
Will she have the same little voice in her head telling her that she’s bound to fail, that if she puts in the effort to get out and go somewhere it will be a disaster, that people have a better time when she isn’t around.
When she becomes a mother – if she decides to become a mother – will she also think that everything bad that exists in her child is her fault. Will she look for the signs that she has passed on the worst of herself.
Will she think about just disappearing from life?
I am on medication right now – a very small dose – and I wonder where I would be if I wasn’t this time. Because I have spent the past 12 hours wondering about my own misplaced optimism and whether I have wasted all the time and effort of the past two years. I would like to stop thinking about myself as an imposter. I would like to see what my husband sees, what my friends see. But here I am. And I can’t meditate it away.
